NEW DELHI: Trichi District in Tamil Nadu has bagged the highest number of Nirmal Gram Puraskar Awards for 2008.
Hundred and ten panchayats in the district have got the award this year, followed by 98 panchayats in Tiruvannamalai and 96 in Nagapattinam districts in the state.
The Central Government gives the annual awards for cent percent achievement in village sanitation.
Out of 1,966 villages in the State that applied for the award this year, 1,249 have been chosen after an assessment made by a screening committee from New Delhi, in the first half of May this year.
The main criteria were total sanitation through individual household toilets, school sanitation, eradication of open defecation and cleanliness of the village environment.
The district administration had recommended 156 panchayats for the awards.
With this, 140 of the 408 village panchayats in the district have got the awards that have been instituted in 2006.
Five panchayats got the award in 2006 and 25 in 2007.
All the 25 panchayats in the Thathaiyengarpet panchayat union have got the awards.
This year, twenty-two panchayats in the country have got the awards and three had already received it in the past couple of years.
The presidents of these panchayats will receive the awards from President Prathiba Patil at a ceremony scheduled for December 8 in Pune.