‘Meri Panchayat’ App Wins WSIS Prizes 2025 Champion Award for Promoting Cultural and Linguistic Diversity.
Awards
In July 2025, the ‘Meri Panchayat’ mobile application, developed under the joint initiative of the Ministry of Panchayati Raj (MoPR) and the National Informatics Centre (NIC), Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), received the prestigious WSIS Prizes 2025 Champion Award. The app was recognised under the WSIS Action Line category for "Cultural Diversity and Identity, Linguistic Diversity and Local Content."
- The award was officially conferred during the WSIS+20 High-Level Event 2025, held from 7 to 11 July 2025 at Palexpo, Geneva, Switzerland. Sunita Jain, Senior Director at NIC/MoPR, accepted the award on behalf of the Government of India (GoI). A separate ceremonial event was held in New Delhi, where Union Minister Rajiv Ranjan Singh alias Lalan Singh (MoPR) formally received the WSIS Champion Certificate.
- The ‘Meri Panchayat’ app, launched in 2023, has emerged as a transformative digital governance platform empowering over 25 lakh elected Panchayat representatives and nearly 950 million rural residents across India. It spans across 2.65 lakh Gram Panchayats (GPs), providing decentralized governance tools at the grassroots level.
- The application ensures transparency and participatory governance by offering real-time access to critical data such as Panchayat budgets, receipts, expenditure, development plans, details of elected officials, and public infrastructure assets. Citizens can monitor civic services directly from their mobile devices.
Main Point :- (i) A unique aspect of the app is its commitment to cultural and linguistic inclusivity. It supports over 12 Indian languages, making governance accessible to citizens in their local dialects and promoting diversity in digital governance.
(ii) The WSIS (World Summit on the Information Society) Prizes are awarded by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in collaboration with UN agencies. The 2025 edition marked the WSIS+20 milestone and focused on evaluating digital tools that support the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
(iii) The award highlights India's growing leadership in leveraging digital tools for grassroots development and its commitment to inclusive governance through multilingual, transparent, and citizen-friendly platforms like 'Meri Panchayat'.
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