Secretary Department of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj, Sheetal Nanda, today flagged off the third batch of Sarpanchs on a five day training cum exposure visit to Uttarakhand.The purpose of the visit is to expose the participants to the best practices, to make them interact with the beacon leaders, learn about implementation of flagship schemes in the state of Uttarakhand.Secretary held a brief interaction with the batch of Sarpanchs, drawn from various districts of the UT, before flagging off them from Panchayat Bhawan Jammu today. She informed that the Department of Panchayati Raj, Uttarakhand has organised the training visit very meticulously under the guidance of HC Semwal, Director, Panchayati Raj Uttarakhand. She exhorted upon the visiting Sarpanchs to take maximum advantage of the field exposure tour so that the best practices learnt gets replicated in various Panchayats of J&K.During the visit, Sarpanchs shall be exposed to various activities being carried out including Solid Liquid Waste Management, generation of Own Source Revenue, Preparation of Budget, Integration of labour budget under MGNREGA with GPDP and SDGs, Integration of Panchayat Development plans at various tiers, Panchayat Enterprise Suit applications etc.Nanda said that it is the vision of the Government to strengthen the Panchayati Raj system in the UT by making rural local bodies self reliant so that they take innovative initiatives and develop their Panchayats in all spheres not only in respect of physical infrastructure but also social and economic fields. This is one of many steps initiated by the department in this direction, she added.Sharing his experiences, a Sarpanch from Panchayat Khojipur who was part of the second batch said that this exposure visit shall prove to be a boon for the PRIs.Director Rural Development, Jammu, Sudershan Kumar and Director Rural Development Kashmir, Qazi Sarwar were also present on the occasion.