Palakkad has cornered the glory in Thiruvananthapuram Doordarshan Kendra's ‘Green Kerala Express' social reality show with Elappully and Akathethara grama panchayats in the district emerging top winners in the show.
In the grand finale of the social reality show here on Tuesday, Elappully with its interesting experiment in milk production and its interventions in the field of agriculture was adjudged the winner from among the grama panchayats. Elappully was awarded Rs.1 crore as the prize money.
Akathethara, which came second, took home a purse of Rs.50 lakh. The third prize of Rs.25 lakh was won by Adatt panchayath in neighbouring Thrissur district.
The award for the best municipality in the State was won by Ottappalam, also in Palakkad district. The second place was cornered by Malappuram municipality. While Ottappalam got prize money of Rs.50 lakh, Malappuram took away Rs.25 lakh. The prizes were given away by Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan at the final episode of the show, which was telecast live by Doordarshan.
The social reality show was mounted jointly by the Thiruvananthapuram Doordarshan Kendra and the Centre for Development of Imaging Technology (C-DIT) for the Kerala State Suchitwa Mission. Altogether 152 panchayats took part in the reality show, which was held in three stages. Fifteen panchayats that entered the final round of the show were given Rs.10 lakh each.
Conceived by Doordarshan Kendra Assistant Station Director G. Sajan and C-DIT deputy director K. Mohan Kumar, the programme had won praise and appreciation of the parliamentary standing committee on Information and Broadcasting for being an excellent example of Development Journalism. The State of Karnataka has decided to replicate the reality show there.
