A Parliamentary Committee on Monday recommended that the Centre must make recipients of government awards sign an undertaking that they would not return their awards at any stage to protest any incident as it is “disgraceful to the country”.
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Transport, Tourism and Culture, which tabled a report in both Houses of Parliament on Monday, noted that “such inappropriate incidents involving the return of awards undermine the achievements of other awardees and also impact the overall prestige and reputation of the awards”.
The Committee noted that 39 artists, including acclaimed writer Nayantara Sehgal, had returned their awards to the Sahitya Akademi. The protest widely came to be known as “award wapsi”. Following the murder of rationalist MM Kalburgi on August 30, 2015, the artists had accused the BJP-led Union government of suppressing criticism.
In the report, the Parliamentary panel headed by YSR Congress’ V Vijaisai Reddy and comprising 10 Rajya Sabha MPs and 31 Lok Sabha MPs, questioned those recipients, who returned their awards but continued their association with the Akademi after allegedly insulting it.
Noting that political issues are outside the ambit of the cultural realms and the autonomous functioning of the concerned Akademi, the report suggested 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”.
“Such inappropriate incidents involving return of awards undermine the achievements of other awardees and also impact the overall prestige and reputation of the awards,” the panel said.
It also recommended “prior concurrence of shortlisted candidates for awards before finalisation”.
However, the report also recorded the dissent from one of the committee members, who opined against such an undertaking, saying, “India is a democratic country, and our Constitution has provided to every citizen the freedom of speech and expression and also the freedom to protest in any form. Returning awards is only a form of protest.”
The dissenting member said that the onus was on the government to look into the actual issues in the protest over which such awards have been awarded, which also garnered the support of another member.