NEW DELHI:
Eminent politician, social worker and educationist B. S. Balachandran has been appointed National Chairman of Central Bharat Sevak Samaj (BSS), set up by the erstwhile Planning Commission of India in 1952 to ensure public co-operation for implementing government plans.
The appointment of 1954-born Balachandran was announced by the General Council of Central Bharat Sevak Samaj at a meeting here on Saturday. Former Prime Minister, the late Gulzarilal Nanda, was the Founder-Chairman of BSS while the country’s first Prime Minister, the late Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, was its Founder-President.
The primary mandate of BSS is to launch a nationwide, non-official and non-political initiative that would enable citizens to contribute, in the form of an organised co-operative effort, to the implementation of the National Development Plan. Balachandran, who assumed the office of General Secretary of BSS, Kerala Pradesh, in 1988, became its all-India Secretary in 2005. He successfully implemented the responsibility of extending Total Employment Training programme across the country by organising Vocational Training Centres and motivating the activists of BSS to conduct vocational training.
His focused functional areas include non-formal education, life-long learning, literacy, vocational education, skill training, environment management & protection, and micro-finance. In 2015, he was honoured by Visvesvaraya Technological University, Karnataka by conferring “Life Time Achievement Award”.
“I am greatly humbled for being appointed as Chairman of BSS. I will strive to give a new momentum to the organisation by planning and executing its various national development activities in an efficient and purposeful manner,” Balachandran said.
