E-Governance award

Organised by the Government of India’s Department of Administrative Reforms & Public Grievances, the 15th National Conference on e-Governance was held on 9-10 February, 2012 at Bhubaneswar, Odisha. The Conference was held at the Convention Centre of KIIT University, Bhubaneswar.At the National Conference on e-Governance the Pune divisional commissioner Prabhakar Deshmukh was felicitated with the award in Bhubaneshwar in recognition of his exemplary work. Maharashtra’s State Agriculture Department has been awarded the gold award at the national level of e-governance.

“It is the first-of-it-kind effort to use information technology in agriculture to benefit the farmers. This experiment which was carried out in the state has already been taken up by Orissa and Gujarat governments,’’ said Deshmukh, who is also former state agriculture commissioner.The project recently passed through three stages of screening which won it the gold medal award at the national level category under the “Exemplary Reuse of Information Communication Technology (ICT) based solution” E-governance award for 2011-12. The award was announced by the Ministry of Administrative reforms and Public grievances.The project, which was carried under the title ‘Crop pest surveillance and advisory project’, bagged the award.

Prabhakar Deshmukh said, “It was a detailed chalked out project post the sudden outbreak of the Spodeptera and other leaf eating caterpillars on Soybean crop in Marathwada and Vidarbha regions of the state. In short span the pest incidence spread rapidly affecting 14.64 lakh hectares of crop cultivated in the area of the total 30.63 lakh hectares. The project was taken up as a challenge.’’