NEW DELHI: A parliamentary committee has suggested “consent of the recipient” was a must in case a National Akademi decided to confer an award to prevent the honour’s return by the individual for political reasons as it was “disgraceful” to the country.The panel also recommended that an undertaking would have to be signed before an award is given and suggested adding a non-disclosure clause to protect against the potential breach of confidentiality of the selection process.In its report, presented in Parliament on Monday, the panel has observed that “such inappropriate incidents involving the return of awards undermine the achievements of the other awardees and also impact the overall prestige and reputation of the awards”.The report is titled, “Action taken by the government on the recommendations/observations of the committee contained in its three hundred fifty-first report on the subject, ‘Functioning of National Akademis and other Cultural Institutions'”.”The committee notes the instances of recipients of awards, given by Akademis (such as Sahitya Akademi Awards), returning their awards in protest of certain political issues which are outside the ambit of the cultural realms and the autonomous functioning of the concerned Akademi,” it said.The panel also observed that awards given by each Akademi continue to be top honours for an artist in India.The committee emphasised that Sahitya Akademi or other Akademis are “apolitical organisations”.”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/she does not return it because of political reasons; as it is disgraceful to the country,” the panel said in its report.The committee has also recommended “prior concurrence of short-listed candidates” for awards before finalisation.”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. Awards may not be given without such an undertaking,” it said.
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