3 from Punjab, 2 Haryanvis also awarded

When Sangeeta Deol of Punjab looks back at her 58 years of life, most of it was a struggle after she was afflicted with polio.

When Sangeeta Deol of Punjab looks back at her 58 years of life, most of it was a struggle after she was afflicted with polio. However, today she is the owner of one of Punjab’s top bee-keeping and mushroom cultivation farms at Dhanad village in Jalandhar. Deol was awarded the Godfrey Phillips Bravery Award in the topmost category of “Mind of Steel” by Governor Prabha Rau at a ceremony held in Shimla today.

Sangeeta contracted polio when she was just nine months old. Sangeeta was married into an agrarian family, where despite her physical challenge she drove a tractor in fields. “When I was married, all the land belonging to my husband’s family was under mortgage. All that we had was a new tractor. I asked them to sell it and buy a second-hand one. From the balance amount, we got back some of the land. Later, one by one

we got back about eight acres,” recalls Sangeeta.

However, she wanted to become independent and make a mark for herself. She began travelling to Delhi daily to market her mushrooms. “I tried setting up a poultry shop with over 8,000 birds after starting with just 20 chicks, but finally I settled for mushroom cultivation and bee keeping, for which I also did a formal course,” she told ENS. Along with her husband, Inderpreet Singh, Sangeeta also invented an auto-honey extracting device.

Ramesh Kumar Nayak, a shopkeeper from Haryana, was awarded the gold medal for saving the life of a man who got stuck in a clogged sewer tank while cleaning it. Though the man died later, Nayak succeeded in rescuing another man who had gone into the sewer tank to save the first one.

Rajnish Pathania from Punjab was given a special bravery award for saving lives of eight of the 12 people aboard a Sumo, which fell into Kandi canal in Hoshiarpur district.

Vinod Kumar Kanathia from Haryana was awarded the silver medal for educating Muslim women in Mewat region of the state. He set up an Adi Gram Samiti that has started a education campaign for Muslim girls with 12 new exclusive centres for girls between six and 20 years of age. Today, the samiti runs 95 such education campaign centres in Mewat, where 5,000 girls have been educated.

A special award was given to Manmeet from non-profit voluntary organisation “Agaz”, which works in Punjab for the uplift of women. Agaz has also adopted Aitiana village in an effort to make women self-reliant.