Premachandran, Ragesh among 11 MPs to get Sansad Ratna Award

NEW DELHI: RSP MP NK Premachandran and former CPM Rajya Sabha MP KK Ragesh are among 11 MPs who will be getting the Sansad Ratna Award 2022, Prime Point Foundation said on Tuesday.

The jury committee has also nominated senior BJP leader from Tamil Nadu H V Hande and Congress veteran M Veerappa Moily for a lifetime achievement award while four parliamentary standing committees -- agriculture, finance, education, and labor – will be awarded for their contributions.

The 11 parliamentarians include eight from the Lok Sabha and three from the Rajya Sabha, the foundation said in a statement.

The 12th edition of the Sansad Ratna Award function will be held on February 26 in the national capital.

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 will be 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) will get 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) will be awarded for their performance in 2021 under the 'sitting members' category.

Communist Party of India (Marxist) MP K K Rajesh (Kerala) has been nominated for the award under the 'retired members in 2021' category for his outstanding performance during his full term in 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.

The awards were instituted at the suggestion of former president late APJ Abdul Kalam, to honor the top-performing parliamentarians.

The first award function was held in 2010 in Chennai and Kalam himself launched the initiative. Till now, 75 top-performing parliamentarians have been honored, according to the foundation.