The Sansad Ratna Awards organizers announced on Sunday that five members of the Lok Sabha, including Sukanta Majumdar of the BJP and Shrikant Eknath Shinde of the Shiv Sena, had been picked for this year’s ceremony. The other three MPs chosen for the honors are Kuldeep Rai Sharma of the Congress, Amol Ramsing Kolhe of the NCP, and Sudheer Gupta of the BJP. The prizes will be given out in a ceremony in the nation’s capital on February 17.
The Sansad Maha Ratna Awards are given once every five years for consistency in performance over the Lok Sabha’s tenure, while the Sansad Ratna Awards are given yearly to the legislators who perform the best.
These awards were established by the non-profit charity trust Prime Point Foundation, located in Chennai, at the request of former Indian President APJ Abdul Kalam, who also hosted the inaugural award ceremony in Chennai in 2010.
These awards, according to the founder and chairman of the Prime Point Foundation K Srinivasan, are based on overall performance. Nominees are chosen by a prestigious jury committee led by former Indian chief election commissioner T S Krishnamurthy and Minister of State for Law and Parliamentary Affairs Arjun Ram Meghwal. The websites of the Rajya Sabha, Lok Sabha, and PRS Legislative Research are the sources of the performance statistics. The only honor given by civic society to India’s top-performing lawmakers is this one.
N K Premachandran (RSP, Kerala), Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury (Indian National Congress, West Bengal), Bidyut Baran Mahato (BJP, Jharkhand), and Heena Vijayakumar Gavit (BJP, Maharashtra) have been selected for the Sansad Maha Ratna Awards for the entire 17th Lok Sabha, according to Priyadharshni Rahul, trustee secretary of the Prime Point Foundation and chair of the Sansad Ratna Awards committee.
“The jury committee has decided to honor Supriya Sule (NCP, Maharashtra), Shrirang Appa Barne (Shiv Sena, Maharashtra), and Bhartruhari Mahtab (BJD, Odisha) for their exemplary performance in the 17th Lok Sabha as well, and these three MPs would be honored with the Sansad Utkrisht Mana Ratna Award as recognition of their continued consistent top performance,” she continued.
She went on to say that the judging committee had publicly chosen each recipient based on how well they had started discussions, private member legislation, and questions in Parliament. Three Standing Committees, beginning with the current 17th Lok Sabha, have also been chosen to receive the Sansad Maha Ratna Awards in recognition of the significance of Parliamentary committees.
Based on settings and reports that they have presented, along with data commensurate with the term of the 17th Lok Sabha, the Agriculture Committee, chaired by P C Gaddi Gowdar (BJP, Karnataka), the Finance Committee, chaired by Jayant Sinha (BJP, Jharkhand), and the Transport and Tourism Committee, currently chaired by Vijayasai Reddy (YSR Congress, Andhra Pradesh) and previously by T G Venkatesh (BJP, Andhra Pradesh), have been nominated for their consistent contributions.
