The
Hindu: Chennai: Saturday, 16 August 2014.
From the
ramparts of the Red Fort in New Delhi to schools and street corners everywhere,
the Indian flag was hoisted on Independence Day. But the man credited with the
design for it, Pingali Venkaiah, was among the several other distinguished
individuals, who did not win the Bharat Ratna awards this year despite
high-level recommendations.
In a letter
dated July 22, Central Public Information Officer of the PMO S.E. Rizwi
informed Hyderabad-based RTI activist Rakesh Reddy Dubuddu that 5,955 pages of
correspondence and 8 pages of file notings were available pertaining to the
decision to award the Bharat Ratna this year. An analysis of these documents
shows that the names of over 50 distinguished individuals, both living and
dead, were recommended in the run-up to the awards ceremony in February.
The letter of
recommendation for Venkaiah came from the government of Andhra Pradesh as well
as the Pingali Venkaiah Charitable Trust in Hyderabad. The former Prime
Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and hockey wizard Dhyan Chand were the most
recommended candidates for the awards. These were, however, not considered
before awarding the Bharat Ratna to cricketer Sachin Tendulkar and scientist
C.N.R. Rao in February this year.
The former
Planning Commission member, K. Kasturirangan, was successful in his
recommendation for scientist C.N.R. Rao, then the Prime Minister’s science
adviser, for the award. The documents include objections received owing to
plagiarism charges against Prof. Rao, but these certainly did not affect the
decision made in his favour. As regards Tendulkar, there is only one PMO
communication marked ‘urgent’ asking for his bio-data. “The decision was made
in a matter of hours it appears from the files,” Mr. Dubuddu said.
Senior BJP
leader Yashwant Sinha had recommended Mr. Vajpayee’s name citing an article by
economist Arvind Panagariya in which the former Prime Minister was referred to
as a leader of substance. Recommendations for Dhyan Chand too came from several
sources, including then Minister of State for Youth Affairs and Sports Jitendra
Singh and Minister of State in the Ministry of Rural Development Pradeep Jain
Aditya, but were not considered.
The documents
also reveal that Tamil Nadu Governor K. Rosaiah recommended singer P. Susheela
and Gopalkrishna Gandhi had recommended Indian classical singer Kishori Amonkar
for the awards, but were unsuccessful. Social reformer Jyoti Rao Phule, ‘Father
of the White Revolution’ V. Kurien, former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao,
freedom movement activist and Dalit leader Babu Jagjivan Ram and former Odisha
Chief Minister Biju Patnaik were among the several other recommendations that
were received for the award, but were not considered.
Mr. Dubuddu,
demanding greater transparency inawarding the Bharat Ratna, said: “The PMO
could proactively disclose the letters of recommendations received from various
quarters for the awards. That would bring about some transparency in the
nomination process. I received the information under RTI seven months after I
filed the original query in December 2013,” he said.
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