Recipients of government awards should be made to give their written consent and sign an undertaking before the honour is bestowed, a parliamentary committee has proposed to discourage awardees from returning awards at a later date over “political reasons”, a gesture popularly called ‘award-wapsi’.
The Parliamentary Committee on Transport, Tourism and Culture tabled the report titled ‘Functioning of National Akademis and Other Cultural Institution’ in Parliament on Monday. “The Committee suggests that whenever an award is given, the consent of the recipient must be taken, so that he/she does not return it because of political reasons; as it is disgraceful to the country,” said the committee headed by YSRCP’s Vijay Sai Reddy.
Prominent members of the committee are Dr Sonal Man Singh, Manoj Tewari, Chedi Pehelwan, Dinesh Lal Yadav ‘Niruaha’, Tirath Singh Rawat, Rajani Patil, Tapir Gao and Rajiv Pratap Rudy.
Justifying the proposal, the committee said the Sahitya Academy and other institutions are apolitical organisations that have “no place for politicism”.
“The instances of recipients of awards, given by Akademis (such as Sahitya Akademi Awards), returning their awards in protest of certain political issues which are outside the ambit of the cultural realms and the autonomous functioning of the concerned Akademi… Such inappropriate incidents involving the return of awards undermine the achievements of the other awardees and also impact the overall prestige and reputation of the awards (sic),” says the report.
The Committee also questioned the re-engagement of such awardees who joined the Akademi after “insulting it” and recommended that prior concurrence of shortlisted candidates be taken. “A system may be put in place where an undertaking is taken from the proposed awardee citing acceptance of the award and that the awardees cannot dishonour the award at any point of time in future.
Awards may not be given without such an undertaking. In the event that the awards are returned, the awardee shall not be considered for such award in the award in the future.”
The Committee, however, faced internal opposition, with two members objecting to the recommendation of seeking “written consent”. The report states that one member asked the Committee to ” strongly recommend to the Government to look into the actual issues in protest of which such awards have been returned and work towards resolving them”. The same was seconded by another member.
The dissenting members argued that India is a democratic country and the Constitution has provided to every citizen the Freedom of Speech and Expression and also the freedom to protest in any form. “Returning of awards is only a form of protest,” the reported quoted them as saying.
Opposition MPs Karti Chidambaram of the Congress and TKS Elangovan of the DMK also took objection to the Committee’s recommendations.
“It is a ridiculous suggestion which takes away the fundamental right to expression, including the right to protest. Every award recipient has the right to his or her opinion on whether they want to accept the award or not. There are instances of even Olympic athletes returning their awards in protest,” Karti Chidambaram said.
Elangovan agreed. “Returning the award is not a disgrace. What the government is doing is a disgrace to the country,” he said.
BJP’s RP Singh said this is only a suggestion and not a rule. “The ministry will see what to do about the recommendation, but returning an award is not a good thing.”
Most notably, 33 recipients, led by Uday Prakash, Nayantara Sehgal and Ashok Vajapyee, had returned their awards following the 2015 Kalburgi murder case. The practice since then has become a popular tool of protest. The most recent instance was prominent wrestlers threatening to throw their medals in the Ganga during their protest against WFI president Brij Bhushan Singh who faces sexual harassment allegations.
At present, the Padma Awards are announced after consent is taken from the proposed awardees. Many on the list, however, decline to accept the honour after the list is made public.
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