By TN Ashok / Chennai
Nine Members of Parliament (MPs) – six from Lok Sabha and three from Rajya Sabha have bagged the Sansad Ratna Awards for 2017 for their outstanding performance in the just concluded 16th Lok Sabha in April this year.
Kerala”s Governor Justice P Sathasivam will confer these awards at a formal function at the Indian Institute of Technology( IIT) Chennai tomorrow May 27 as the engineering institute of excellence partners with the Chennai based NGO
Prime Point Foundation and eMagazine PreSense which have been giving awards to top performing MPs since 2010.
The awards were instituted by the foundation on a suggestion given by the then president of India Dr APJ Adul Kalam that good work by peoples representatives in parliament should be recognised and awarded.
Shrirang Appa Barve (Shiv Sena- Mavel – Maharashtra), Rajeev Shankar Rao Satav, INC – Hingoli –Maharashtra and Dhananjay Bhimrao Mahadi (National Congress Party – Kolhapur – Maharashtra) were nominated by the jury committee for wards under different categories of debates, questions, discussions etc.
Bhatruhari Mahtab ,Biju Janata Dal – Cuttack – Odisha, N K Premachandran , Revolutionary Socialist Party , Kollam , Kerala , have been nominated for special awards by the jury committee for their excellence in quality of debates and other parliamentary proceedings.
K Srinivasan , Chairman of the Prime Point Foundation , told newsmen today that Dr Heena Vijaykumar Gavit, the youngest MP of BJP from Nandurbar, Maharashtra has been nominated for the award under the Womens MP category. NCP’s Supriya Sule had won this award twice in previous years.
The foundation commernced honouring outstanding Rajya Sabha members who had retired the previous year after the completion of their full six year term. This year Sanja Raut , Shiv Sena Maharashtra, K N Balagopal, CPI_M Kerala and Dr T N Seema, CPI-M Kerala have been nominated among the Rajya Sabha MPs who retired in 2016 after putting in an outstanding performance highlighting issues of public interest before the government/.
The jury headed by Anandrao Adsul, veteran MP from Shiv Sena comprised the Union Minister of State for Home Hansraj Ahir, and Arjun Ram Meghwal , Minister of state for Finance, selected the winners. Co-terminus with the awards, a national seminar on politics, democracy ad governance is being held with leading figures of politics, journalism and educationists attending.