Six children from the mountains of Uttarakhand — who faced bear attacks, flash floods, cloudbursts and speeding vehicles — stood on a stage at Parade Ground, Dehradun on Friday, 6 November 2026, receiving the state's newest honour for extraordinary courage. The Chief Minister's Office of Uttarakhand announced that Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami jointly presented the inaugural Mukhyamantri Rajya Bal Veerta Puraskar — the first Chief Minister's State Child Bravery Award — to the six awardees.

India's newest child-bravery award takes shape in Dehradun

The award is administered by Uttarakhand's Women Empowerment and Child Development Department and has been instituted for the financial year 2026-27 as the first edition. Applications were invited state-wide; six children were selected from that pool. Each winner received a medal, a citation letter, and a cash prize of ₹51,000 transferred directly to their bank accounts via DBT (Direct Benefit Transfer). The stated objective is to publicly recognise and inspire exceptional acts of courage, presence of mind, and community responsibility among children.

The national benchmark for such recognition — the National Bravery Awards presented annually since 1957 by the Indian Council for Child Welfare — has long celebrated young heroes. Uttarakhand's new state-level award mirrors and complements that tradition, creating a dedicated pipeline for children whose acts of bravery might otherwise go unnoticed at the national stage.

Bear in the schoolyard: Chamoli's Divya, Deepika and Arav

Three of the six awards went to children from Chamoli district, all connected to a single terrifying morning. On 22 December 2025, at approximately 9:30 AM, a bear entered the campus of GIC UPS Harishankar, Chamoli. The animal attacked Arav Singh, a Class 6 student, who fought to free himself. Divya, a Class 8 student, chased the bear and helped pull Arav to safety. Deepika simultaneously shepherded nine other students into a Class 7 room, locking down the group until the threat had passed. The coordinated response of three children — none older than a teenager — contained a wildlife emergency that could have ended in mass casualties.

Flash flood, cloudburst, and a speeding car — the other three stories

Maya of Champawat district was honoured for rescuing a girl who had been swept into a fast-flowing river swollen by heavy rain on 5 August 2025. Maya jumped in despite the strong current, pulled the girl out, and sustained injuries herself in the process. Her intervention saved a life at direct personal cost.

Aradhya of Dehradun district acted during a cloudburst on the evening of 2 June 2026, when debris and water began rushing toward her home. She alerted all 17 people inside the house in time for them to evacuate, and separately rescued a three-year-old child from the floodwater. Without her quick read of the danger, the outcome could have been catastrophic.

Shweta of Tehri Garhwal district acted on 30 January 2025 when she spotted an elderly man walking with a cane as a vehicle bore down on him at speed. She grabbed his hand and pulled him to the roadside in seconds, a split-second decision that prevented a fatal accident.

Why Uttarakhand needs this award more than most states

Uttarakhand's Himalayan geography makes emergencies a fact of daily life — bear encounters near forest-edge schools, annual cloudbursts, flash floods along mountain rivers, and fast traffic on narrow hill roads. The state has long grappled with how to build community resilience, particularly among its youngest residents. The new award formalises what has previously been informal recognition: that children in these villages routinely display courage that most adults never face. The Women Empowerment and Child Development Department has signalled that subsequent annual cycles of the award will follow, with the broader aim of integrating safety consciousness into child development programming.

Six children. Six separate moments of mortal danger. Six decisions made in seconds that changed outcomes entirely. Uttarakhand has now put a medal and a name on that kind of courage — and it will not be the last time.