Himachal bags award for implementing Soil Health Card scheme

Himachal Pradesh has bagged another National Award in Agriculture sector for 2015-16 as Hamirpur district has been selected for the Prime Minister's Award for Excellence in Public Administration.
The award is given for excellent implementation of Soil Health Card Scheme, Upma Chowdhary, Additional chief secretary (Agriculture) said.
The Soil Health Card Scheme is one of the four schemes - three others being Swachh Bharat, Gramin Swachh Vidyalaya and Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana - identified by the Union Government to be awarded under Prime Minister's Award for Excellence in Public Administration, Chowdhary said.
Only two districts - Hamirpur in Himachal and Balrampur in Chhattisgarh - have been given award for implementation of this scheme and Himachal bagged the first position among the Hilly and northern states.

The award was presented by Prime Minister in New Delhi today and carries a cash prize of Rs 10 lakh. It was received by the Resident Commissioner.
The state was recently awarded the National-level 'Krishi Karman Award' for increase in total foodgrains production for the year 2014-15 in Category II States. The award carried a cash prize of Rs 1 crore.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the scheme on February 19, 2015 with an objective to issue soil health cards to all farmers within three years.
The state's Agriculture Department implemented the scheme with great zeal and achieved the target of collecting 69,635 samples for soil testing within a year against the stipulated three years, Chowdhary said.

Analysis of samples was done simultaneously and 1,60,000 Soil Health cards have been distributed.
Subsequent to visits by central teams, Hamirpur was selected for the first prize in implementation of Soil Health Card Scheme among the Hill and North Eastern States.
The distribution of Soil Health Cards to the farmers was started on December 5 last which was observed as International Soil Day and all 76,140 farmers of the district would receive the cards by June 30, 2016.
The Agriculture Department organised farmers' camps to generate awareness about the Scheme anda network of 11 laboratories and 7 mobile testing vans were used to analyse the samples.