Centre notifies scheme for Prime Minister’s awards for excellence in public administration

New Delhi: The Centre on Tuesday notified the scheme for the Prime Minister’s awards for Excellence in Public Administration 2025, a Personnel Ministry statement said.

A web portal for registration and submission of nominations on the PM’s awards will be formally launched from October 2 and nominations can be submitted thereafter, it added.

According to the statement, the awards scheme was notified to promote greater efforts for holistic development of India, with focus on saturation approach, collation of data or documentary evidence and focussing on good governance and qualitative aspects with respect to the implementation of 11 priority sector schemes which will be evaluated collectively under the scheme.

Under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the communication said, the entire concept and format of the PM's excellence award has undergone a revolutionary change since 2014.

The objective of the scheme is to encourage constructive competition, innovation, replication and institutionalisation of best practices, it added.

The emphasis was stated to be on good governance, qualitative achievement and last mile connectivity, rather than on achievement of quantitative targets.

This year's award scheme aims to recognise the performance of the district collector through targeted individual beneficiaries and implementation with a saturation approach.

"With this focus, the applications for awards would be evaluated on three parameters, good governance, qualitative and quantitative," the statement said.

It is expected that all the districts participate in this scheme of Prime Minister’s awards for excellence in public administration 2025, it said.

For 2025, the scheme for Prime Minister’s awards aims to recognise the contribution of civil servants under three categories.

Category I is for holistic development of districts under 11 priority sector programmes. Under this category, five awards would be conferred, the statement said.

Category II is for aspirational blocks programme and under this, five awards would be conferred, it said.

In category III meant for innovations for central ministries/departments, states and districts, six awards would be conferred.

The period of consideration is April 1 2022 to September 30, 2025 for the category I (holistic development of districts) and April 1, 2023 to September 30, 2025 for category II (aspirational blocks programme) and category III (innovations), according to the statement.

The evaluation process would include Short-listing of districts/organisations by screening committee (first and second stage), evaluation by expert committee and empowered committee, it said.

Prime Minister’s approval will be taken on the recommendations of the empowered committee for the awards, the statement said.

The PM’s awards, 2025 will consist of a trophy, scroll and an incentive of Rs20 lakh to the awarded district/organisation to be utilised for implementation of project/programme or bridging resources gaps in any area of public welfare, it added.