Patna: The Unnayan Banka initiative, which entails providing quality education for all using latest technologies, has been nominated by the government of India for the Commonwealth Association for Public Administration and Management (CAPAM) International Innovations Awards (IIA) for 2018.

The CAPAM International Innovations Awards (IIA) is given for innovation in public service for making significant contributions to improve governance and services in the public sector.

The event is held biennially and the award for this would be announced in October at Georgetown in Guyana after the CAPAM conference.

The ministry of personnel, public grievances and pensions had sent a letter to the state government earlier this month informing about the selection of the state's initiative for the international award.

Following this letter, an executive summary and project details were given to the Centre on the basis of which the government of India nominated this project for the award.

The nomination for the Bihar initiative, which was started by the Banka district administration in August last year, has come close on the heels of it being selected as the best initiative under innovation category at the national level.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had handed over the award to Banka district magistrate (DM) Kundan Kumar during the Civil Service Day event in Delhi on April 21.

As far as the Unnayan Banka initiative is concerned, it uses modern technology to deliver quality education to students even in the remote areas of this eastern Bihar district. It uses mobile phones and smart TVs to deliver its services.

For mobile users, the Unnayan Banka project has come up with a mobile app ECKOVATION which can be downloaded from the Google Play store free of cost.

The platform provides help to students from classes IX to XII and to those preparing for various competitive examinations, including IIT-JEE and the civil services examination conducted by the Union Public Service Commission.

Apart from providing basic lessons, the platform also allows the students to get their doubts cleared by experts, who have been roped in to help students through crowd sourcing. Students can also use the WhatsApp number 8851091247 for any education related help from Unnayan Banka.

On the initiative's nomination for an international award, Banka DM Kundan Kumar told The Telegraph on Thursday: "Such recognition motivates team Banka to do better for realising the goal of better education for all."

He said the Unnayan Banka initiative could be summarised as an initiative which is different from the traditional chalk and talk method and uses multimedia to deliver quality education to the students in the simplest possible manner.