In a bid to stem the use of ‘award wapasi’ as a political tool, a Parliamentary Standing Committee has suggested taking an undertaking from shortlisted candidates for academy awards beforehand that the honours would not be returned for “political reasons”.
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The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Tourism, Transport and Culture, in its report submitted to the Rajya Sabha on Monday, has suggested that the awards by various literary and culture bodies under the Culture Ministry like the Sahitya Akademi may not be given without such an undertaking and in the event that the awards are returned, the awardee shall not be considered for any award in the future.
Sources said two committee members CPI(M)’s A.A. Rahim and Congress’ K. Muralidharan objected to the recommendation.
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It its report, the committee observed that the awards given by each Akademi continue to be top honours for an artist in India and that the Sahitya Akademi or other Akademis are apolitical organisations.
Political reasons
“There is no place for politics. The committee, therefore, suggests that whenever an award is given, the consent of the recipient must be taken, so that he or she does not return it because of political reasons; as it is disgraceful to the country”.
It further said that apart from taking prior concurrence of shortlisted candidates for awards, a system may be put in place where an undertaking is taken from the proposed awardee citing acceptance of the award and that the awardees cannot dishonour the award at any point of time in future.
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“Awards may not be given without such an undertaking. In the event that the awards are returned, the awardee shall not be considered for such award in the future”.
The Ministry of Culture informed the committee that during the year 2015, a total number of 39 writers returned their awards to the Sahitya Akademi.
The awards were returned as a mark of protest over the killing of M.M. Kalburgi, an eminent writer from Karnataka.