New Delhi, Mar 26 (PTI) Former Karnataka chief minister M Veerappa Moily and former Tamil Nadu health minister H V Hande were conferred with lifetime achievement awards at the 12th edition of Sansad Ratna Awards on Saturday.
NCP’s Supriya Sule and BJD’s Amar Patnaik are among 11 MPs who were honoured at the Sansad Ratna Awards 2022 under various categories, the Prime Point Foundation said.
They were presented the awards by Chief Election Commissioner Sushil Chandra at the Maharashtra Sadan.
“A new feature of the 12th session of the Sansad Ratna Awards Committee was the Lifetime Achievement APJ Abdul Kalam Award given to 95-year-old veteran MLA of the Tamil Nadu assembly, Dr H V Hande, a former health minister. Former Karnataka chief minister Veerappa Moily, veteran MLA and MP, was also the recipient of this award,” the foundation said.
According to the foundation, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) MP Sule, Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) MP N K Premachandran and Shiv Sena MP Shrirang Appa Barne have been awarded the ‘Sansad Vishisht Ratna’ award for their sustained outstanding performance.
Trinamool Congress MP Saugata Roy (West Bengal), Congress MP Kuldeep Rai Sharma (Andaman and Nicobar Islands), and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MPs Bidyut Baran Mahato (Jharkhand), Heena Vijayakumar Gavit (Maharashtra) and Sudhir Gupta (Madhya Pradesh) got the Sansad Ratna Award for their performance in the 17th Lok Sabha, it said.
In the Upper House, Biju Janata Dal (BJD) MP Amar Patnaik (Odisha) and NCP MP Fauzia Tahseen Ahmed Khan (Maharashtra) have been awarded for their performance in 2021 under the ‘sitting members’ category.
Communist Party of India (Marxist) MP K K Ragesh (Kerala) was awarded under the ‘retired members in 2021’ category for his outstanding performance during his full term in the Rajya Sabha, it said.
The awardees were selected based on their cumulative performance from the beginning of the 17th Lok Sabha till the end of the winter session 2021 based on the data provided by PRS India, Prime Point Foundation’s founding chairman K Srinivasan said.
The Sansad Ratna Awards Committee was chaired by Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Arjun Ram Meghwal and co-chaired by T S Krishnamurthy, former chief election commissioner of India.
In his acceptance speech, Moily said the electoral reforms were necessary to ensure that money power did not come in the way of genuine candidates who struggled to muster the finances to contest elections.
He said the government should explore the concept of state funding of elections.
The awards were instituted on the suggestion of former president late APJ Abdul Kalam, to honour the top-performing parliamentarians.
The first award function was held in 2010 in Chennai and Kalam himself launched the initiative. PTI VA CK
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