Kargil/ Jan. 26/ News Desk: Zanskar’s Manjhi man, Tsultrim Chonjor, became the first person from district Kargil to receive the Padma Shri award.

75-year-old Tsultrim Chonjor, fondly known as ‘Meme Chonjor, who comes from the remote village of Stongde in the Zanskar Valley of Ladakh, has a similar story to that of Manjhi in Bihar.
Aakashwani in a radio report says that Chonjor has assisted in developing road from Zanskar’s Sumdoo to Kirgyaq Lungnaq.
From May 2014 to June 2017, Chonjor singlehandedly led efforts to construct a 38-km stretch of road from Ramjak, an inhabited area on the Jammu and Kashmir side of Shinkula pass, to Kargyak village, the first properly inhabited village in the Zanskar region, read a report on the Better India portal.

Spending Rs 57 lakh from his own pocket after dipping into life savings and selling his ancestral property, Meme Chonjor pressed a JCB machine into action, set forth with five donkeys and constructed the road.

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The Border Roads Organisation (BRO) later undertook road widening construction on this stretch.
He is engaged for several years in helping neglected community of the area, which has been isolated with difficult accessibility and is in poverty and despair.
He is often described by the locals as “one-man army” for taking up problems of the people and getting them addressed.

On Republic Day the MP Ladakh, SDM Zanskar, and other sub divisional officers congratulated and appreciated Chonjor with traditional Khatak, here in Zanskar.