SAMBA: The fifth phase of the government's flagship programme Back to Village concluded today in the district with a series of activities aimed at strengthening the grassroots governance and ensuring the delivery of public services to the people.

The programme, which started from November 7 and lasted till November 16, covered all 101 panchayats in the district and focussed on assessing the gaps and taking measures to bridge them in the development process, saturating the government services, enhancing the accessibility and awareness of all government schemes and reviewing the action taken on the demands raised in the previous phases of the programme.

The programme witnessed the enthusiastic participation of 101 senior officials of various government departments, or Visiting Officers, and the elected representatives of the panchayats, who expressed their satisfaction over the active involvement of the visiting officers.

The main activities of the programme included holding public meetings with Gram Sabhas, displaying departmental stalls, inspecting bank counters, generating awareness about PM Vishwakarma and Ayushman Bharat schemes, saturating Soil Health Cards and Golden Health Cards, old age pension, domicile certificates, Kisan Credit Cards and passbooks.

As a novel initiative, the district administration Samba felicitated women achievers in each panchayat as part of Beti Bachao Beti Padhao campaign during the Back to Village programme and also graded the panchayats on the focus areas of the government with an aim to incentivise the well performing panchayats.