Odisha to increase honorarium of Padma awardees to ₹30,000 a month
There are over 150 Padma awardees from Odisha, of whom 55 are alive and some of them are struggling to make ends meet with their meagre income
Bhubaneswar: The Odisha government on Saturday announced that it would enhance the monthly honorarium of the 55 Padma award recipients of the state, who are still alive, from ₹25,000 to ₹30,000.
A statement from the chief minister’s office said ₹2 crore would be spent on remuneration to the 55 Padma awardees. Early this year, then chief minister Naveen Patnaik had announced ₹25,000 monthly honorarium to the Padma awardees.
In June 2019, Odisha had started giving monthly honorarium to the Padma awardees after Padma Shri awardee Daitari Naik, a 75-year-old tribal farmer from mineral-rich Keonjhar district said he would have to sell off his medal as he was not getting any work as a daily labourer after getting the Padma Shri as people were wary of engaging a national awardee in their fields and households.
There are over 150 Padma awardees from Odisha, of whom 55 are alive and some of them are struggling to make ends meet with their meagre income.
The first Padma awardee from Odisha was Mahadeva Iyer Ganapati, a civil engineer who was well known for his accomplishments in Rourkela Steel Plant in Odisha and railway projects such as Churchgate railway station in Mumbai and Chittaranjan Locomotive Works. Ganapati was awarded Padma Bhushan in 1954.