New Delhi: Eight members of Parliament were given the Lokmat Parliamentary Awards for their outstanding work this year.
The members are Congress leader AK Antony, Biju Janata Dal’s Bhartruhari Mahtab, TMC Leader Dereck O’Brien, NCP’s Vandana Chavan, BJP leaders Tejashwi Surya and Locket Chatterjee, RJD’s Manoj Kumar Jha and AIMIM President Asaduddin Owaisi.
The Lokmat Parliamentary Awards are given to outstanding Parliamentarians — four each from Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha — for their contribution in eight different categories.
The awards were conceived in 2017 to recognise and encourage positive work done by parliamentarians every year and were conferred during 2017-2019 to winners by Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu.
Due to Covid, the awards could not be held for the last two years. 2022 was the 4th edition of the awards.
A jury studied parliamentary contribution for the year 2020 and 2021 to select the winners.
AIMIM President Asaduddin Owaisi and TMC’s Dereck O’ Brien were unanimously selected best parliamentarians. Antony and Mahtab were given the ‘Lifetime Achievement’ award, while Chavan and Locket Chatterjee were the ‘Best Women Parliamentarians of the Year’. BJP’s Tejaswi Surya and RJD’s Manoj Kumar Jha were chosen ‘Best Debutants’.
The jury is headed by NCP President Sharad Pawar and comprises former Union Ministers Ghulam Nabi Azad and Suresh Prabhu, RSP’s NK Premachandran, former Rajya Sabha secretary general Yogendra Narayan, ThePrint’s founder and Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta, TV9 Bharatvarsh News Director Hemant Sharma, Lokmat Editorial Board chairman and former Rajya Sabha MP Vijay Darda, senior editor of business and politics Sharad Gupta and national editor Harish Gupta of the Lokmat group.
Past winners include former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, Lal Krishna Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Sharad Pawar, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Sharad Yadav, Sitaram Yechury, Jaya Bachchan, Supriya Sule, Nishikant Dubey, Hema Malini, Bharti Pawar, Sushmita Dev, Meenakshi Lekhi and Rajni Patil.
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