On 30th July 2020, The SKOCH Awards were presented over a virtual platform at the 66th SKOCH Summit at New Delhi. The 66th SKOCH 2020 Competition on the title “India Responds to COVID Through Digital Governance” and the Ministry of Tribal Affairs(MoTA) participated in the “Digital India & E-Governance” 2020 competition.
- SKOCH Gold Award was presented to MoTA for its project of Scholarship Division – “Empowerment of Tribals through IT enabled Scholarship Schemes”.
- The project was launched to achieve the goal of Digital India and to improve the transparency and ease to the delivery of services.
- The Ministry integrated 5 scholarship schemes with the Direct Benefit Transfer(DBT) portal under the DBT Mission and the initiative was launched on 12th June 2019.
- Around Rs.2500 Crore were directly transferred to the bank accounts of the more than 20 Lakh students in around 31 states and UTs.
SKOCH Awards:
i.The SKOCH award, the highest civilian honour in India, instituted in 2003 to recognise the people, projects and institutions that work to build a better India.
ii.The SKOCH Foundation awards one platinum award, 3 Gold awards and 10 silver Awards every year.
West Bengal receives top Award of SKOCH:
i.eSamadhan -Chief minister’s office(CMO) public grievance system of the Government of West Bengal received the SKOCH Platinum award – top award from the SKOCH foundation for the performance of grievance redressal cell of the Chief minister’s office(CMO).
ii.PB Salim, IAS, senior secretary in CMO received the Award.
Telangana Receives 2 Gold and One Silver SKOCH Awards:
i.Sand Sale Management & Monitoring System, the robust and transparent ICT solution of the Mineral Development Corporation Ltd of Telangana received the SKOCH Gold Award under the Digital India Category.
ii.The Government of Telangana won the SKOCH Gold Award for its Blockchain-based property registration project, the solution was piloted in partnership with CDAC Hyderabad to ensure tamper proof land records.
iii.Telangana won the SKOCH Silver award for T-Chits, a blockchain-based system to govern chit fund operations which won the gold medal under the emerging technologies at the 23rd National Awards for e-Governance in 2020, organised by DRAP and MeitY.
iv.The AI based Crowd Estimation and Management project to help police manage a large crowd implemented during the Medaram Jatara and the Medha Chatbot that helps citizens to find the right registration office received the Order of Merits.
v.The projects were developed by the Information Technology, Electronics & Communications Department of Telangana Government, launched by Telangana’s Minister of Information Technology(IT) during the declaration of 2020 as Telangana’s year of AI.
Other Awards:
i.‘Surakshita’ mobile application of Rajkot City police launched in December 2019, developed to provide immediate help to women who travel alone for their job or classes, won the SKOCH Silver award. The app was designed on the concepts of Himmat app launched by Delhi police.
ii.Jagatsinghpur and Nabarangpur districts of Odisha received the SKOCH silver awards for the COVID-19 management.
iii.Kamareddy district administration, Telangana was selected for the SKOCH silver Award for the district’s COVID-19 response to control the spread of infection.
About SKOCH:
Chairman– Sameer Kochhar
Head Office– Gurgaon, Haryana
About Ministry of Tribal Affairs:
Union Minister– Arjun Munda
Minister of State– Renuka Singh Saruta
Recent Related News:
i.Big Bang Boom Solutions Pvt Ltd (BBBS), start-up company in the defence sector was awarded the prestigious SKOCH Award for “Boron Nitrate Based Personal Hybrid Combat Armour ”.
