Kejriwal felicitates 24 senior citizens

“I am of the belief that a household where the elderly citizens are not respected can never be successful. Similarly, a nation that does not respect its elderly citizens can never be successful. The reason that Delhi has been so successful in the last few years is that senior citizens are very happy… I got the opportunity to visit some old-age homes and they were in excellent condition,” he said.

Kejriwal also spoke about Delhi’s healthcare model and its free ‘Teerth Yatra Scheme’. “There are just a handful of countries where the healthcare model is as good as the one in Delhi. What even America has not been successful in providing, the Delhi government has made available to the people of Delhi… There is another desire that many elderly citizens have which is to go on a ‘teerth yatra’ in their old-age. There are only a handful of people who can afford to go. For those who can’t, Delhi government has taken it upon itself to give an opportunity to people,” he said.

Social Welfare Minister Raaj Kumar Anand and Assembly Speaker Ram Niwas Goel were also present at the event.

Awards were given to M Lala, who trained plumbers and electricians during Covid; Jaikishan Agarwal who works for organ donation; environmentalist Srinivas Sharma; Retired Group Captain S.C. Behri; Jeevan Ram Gupta who works with senior citizens, Gyan Chand Jain for contributions in the field of IT; painter Harish Srivastava; theatre artist Jalabala Vaidya; sitar player Pandit Ras Bihari Dutta; sculptor R S Bisht; agriculturist Raghunath Singh; founder of Sangam Kala Group VSK Sood; physician Dr Anil Kumar Chaturvedi; paediatric surgeon Dr Shanti Talwar; Unani medicine specialist Shamshul Ashfaq; Paediatrician Dr Rajendra Nath Srivastava; Vinod Kumar who works on ageing and health; Ayurvedic medicine doctors Dr Chandra Prakash Verma and Vaidya Tarachand Sharma.

The list also has Omkar Nath who provides free medicines to the poor; Olympics gold medalist Harvi-nder Singh; cricket coach AN Sharma; Virendra Raj Mehta who helps victims of land mine blasts and freedom fighter SN Kakkar.