Bhopal: Cementing MP’s standing as a ‘Good Samaritan’ state which never turns its back on the distressed, it has stood third in the terms of the do-gooders rewarded under the ‘Rah-Veer’ scheme, a flagship central initiative aimed at acknowledging people who rushed accident victims to hospitals during the critical ‘golden hour’.Over the course of a year after the scheme’s April 2025 launch, MP rewarded 15 ‘rah-veers’ who took victims of road accidents to hospitals within the ‘golden hour’.The Union road transport and highways ministry put out numbers of ‘Good Samaritans’ across states at the completion of a year since the scheme’s launch pegging MP’s count at 15, third after Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh.The scheme attracts a cash prize of Rs 25,000 each for the ‘Good Samaritans’.Gujarat tops the list of states with 27 ‘rah-veers’ in the inaugural year of the scheme, followed by Himachal which rewarded 20 ‘Good Samaritans’.However, there are still some states that are yet to reward their ‘rah-veers’, according to the Union ministry which pioneered the project.The primary objective of the scheme is to motivate people to do their turn as conscientious citizens and help out road accident victims within the span of time deemed critical to their survival.The cash reward was initially set at Rs 5,000 but was later increased to Rs 25,000. A ‘Good Samaritan’ can be rewarded a maximum of five times in a year under the scheme. It was initially launched in 2020 as ‘Good Samaritan’ scheme with a cash reward of Rs 5,000 each.However, it was relaunched in April 2025 under a new name and a revised cash prize, after the earlier scheme failed to spark any interest.The scheme specifies that once a do-gooder citizen wheels in a road accident victim, the hospital concerned will immediately send word to the local police, who, in turn, will notify the district collector.A copy of the report on his ‘Good Samaritan’ act is to be shared with the person concerned and the reward is to be directly transferred to his bank account.The Union ministry issued detailed guidelines under the scheme on April 21, 2025, stating that it felt a need to motivate the general public, helping out critical accident victims, “through cash rewards and certificates”.
