Bose award for disaster mitigation to U'khand org, ex-IPS officer

The Disaster Mitigation and Management Centre in Uttarakhand and former IPS officer K M Singh have been selected for the Subhash Chandra Bose Aapda Prabandhan Puraskar for their commendable work in disaster management, the Home Ministry announced on Thursday.

While the Disaster Mitigation and Management Centre in Uttarakhand, an organisation working in the field of natural calamity relief, has been selected in the institution category and will be given a certificate and a cash prize of Rs 51 lakh, Singh, who has been working in the same area, has been selected for the individual category and will be given Rs 5 lakh along with a certificate.

The award is given in order to recognise the excellent work done by individuals and institutions in the country in the field of disaster management, according to a Home Ministry statement.

The award is announced every year on January 23, the birth anniversary of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose.

The award scheme for the year 2020 was given wide publicity, and nominations for the award were solicited from August 1 last year onwards.

The last date for receipt of nominations was October 15, 2019. The response to the award scheme was overwhelming, with about 330 nominations from institutions and individuals. For the selection of award, the nominations were scrutinised by the two high-level committees.

Last year, 8th Battalion of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) located in Ghaziabad, was selected for the award for its commendable work in disaster management.

In the aftermath of any disaster, many organisations and individuals work silently but effectively to alleviate suffering of the affected population. A good deal of work is done in research or innovations in early warning, prevention, mitigation, preparedness, rescue, relief and rehabilitation, the statement said.

The Disaster Mitigation and Management Centre in Uttarakhand discharges the functions of the State Disaster Management Authority under the government of Uttarakhand.

Since its establishment in 2006, it has coordinated various post disaster functions relating to coordination, requisition, information exchange and media briefing, including those after 2010, 2012 and 2013 major disaster incidents.

It has been organising mock exercises at state, district and tehsil-level with the support of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) and has trained state government officials in Incident Response System (IRS) and organised incidence response trainings (IRTs) till tehsil-level.

The Centre ensures interaction with various scientific and academic institutions working in the field of DRR in the country for dissemination of emerging technologies and techniques amongst state government departments through workshops.

M K Singh was appointed founder member of the NDMA in 2005, following his commendable work during 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami.

In the NDMA, Singh envisioned and had taken painstaking efforts to establish, one of its kind specialist response force, the 'National Disaster Response Force' from scratch to today's strong force of 14,000 personnel comprising of 12 battalions.

Under the superintendence and directions of Singh, the NDRF delivered commendable response in its nascent phase itself during the devastating 2008 Kosi floods.