Jalandhar village bags award

Aparna Banerji

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Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, September 19

Khassan village in Kapurthala, four-time national awardee, has been selected for the ‘Deen Dayal UpadhyayaPanchayat Sashaktikaran Puraskar-2019’ for its sterling work on sanitation.

The panchayat is the first in the state to set up water soaking pits for rainwater harvesting, the biggest revenue generating village in the district, and also the first to become an open defecation-free village.

Chosen among 123 best performing gram panchayats of the country, the village shall be awarded Rs8 lakh from the Union Ministry of Panchayati Raj for further advancement in the field of sanitation.

The Union Ministry awarded it the Rashtriya Gaurav Gram Sabha Puraskar for the year 2014-2015. It also received the state award for water conservation from the World Bank in 2015.

The village, which falls in the Nadala block, is among the seven Punjab villages chosen for the honour and the only Doaba village on the list. Also, it has the only silver ionisation project for cleaning drinking water in the state.

Former village sarpanch Narinder Singh Kang said: “Each and every house of the village has water meters. We have a population of 4,000 people and water supply via the ionisation project is ensured to 550 households.”

The village also has three sewage ponds with triple filteration system, which treat sewage water waste of the village to irrigate 25 to 30 acres of crop land.