The State Transport Minister Sushanta Chowdhury felicitated eight Rah-Veers with awards yesterday. This is the first time that eight Rah-Veers from the state have been felicitated under the central government’s Rah-Veer Scheme.

The central government launched ‘Rah-Veer’ Scheme by merging the former ‘Good Samaritan’ Scheme for those who save lives of road accident victims by facilitating their treatment within the Golden Hour or 1 hour of the incident. The felicitated Rah Veers from the state are Babulal Debnath, Titu Datta, Uttam Paul, Shyamal Das, Santosh Das, Biswajit Chowdhury, Jayanta Sinha and Mingchung Nonga.

The Transport Minister Sushanta Chowdhury handed over a certificate and cheque to the recipients of this honour at the beginning of the 17th State Road Safety Council’s meeting at the secretariat yesterday. Under this new scheme the saviour of road accident victim is awarded a cash prize of Rs. 25,000.

If multiple individuals are involved in the initiative then the prize money is equally shared by them. In the meeting among others who felicitated the Rah-Veers included the finance secretary Apurba Roy, special secretary of food department Debapriya Bardhan, additional secretary of the transport department Subrata Chowdhury, IGP (law and order) Manchak Ipar, SP (Traffic) Kanta Jangir.

The Transport Minister Sushanta Chowdhury thanked the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari for launching this scheme. Other top officials of the concerned departments were also present there.