Karnataka - Bangalore

Special committee struggles to shortlist Rajyotsava award-winners

Bangalore: Caught in its own populist measures and the mounting pressure from various quarters, the special committee constituted for selecting the annual Rajyotsava award-winners, to be presented on November 1, has been reportedly struggling to make an “objective shortlist” of the number of persons for the awards.

The Government is set to jettison its proclaimed decision to restrict the number to 52, in compliance with the policy evolved by the previous Janata Dal (Secular)-Bharatiya Janata Party coalition government.

The BJP Government had issued instructions to the committee to that effect, though the number of award seekers was over 1,500 at the time of constituting the committee, headed by Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa. Ministers Shobha Karandlaje, Govind Karjol, R. Ashok, Basavaraja Bommai and Suresh Kumar, the chairpersons of the Kannada Development Authority and eight academies and the Secretary to the Department of Kannada and Culture and the Director of Kannada and Culture, are in the committee.

Although the committee was confident that the selection would be a smooth affair, it was baffled by the increasing number of applications and recommendations seeking favours in the past one week .The committee had met on Tuesday and discussed the challenging and sensitive task to shortlist the number of award winners to 52, according to political, cultural and Government sources.

Not willing to antagonise the influential channels at this juncture for obvious reasons, the Government had suggested to the committee to be liberal in making the selection.

Following the suggestion, the committee is likely to recommend 60 to 75 persons for the awards by Wednesday.

But in the light of past experiences, the chances of the awardees reaching 100 or more are not ruled out. This was evident by Mr. Yeddyurappa’s statement that the number of awardees might be in the range of 80. The Government is likely to announce the list of award winners on October 30, sources said.

From 1992 to 2005, lobbying and political interventions for the awards had demoralised the bureaucracy and belittled the value of the award.

In 1992, the S. Bangarappa Government had created a record by honouring 172 persons. In 2005, the Congress-JD (Secular) coalition government broke the record by presenting 175 Rajyotsava awards.

By contrast, in 2004, the S.M. Krishna Government had asserted that the number of awards would not exceed 50. But it was forced to increase it to 60. In 2006, the JD (Secular)-BJP Government decided to limit the number of awards to 50, to mark the inauguration of the golden jubilee year of the formation of the State and successfully cut thorough lobbying and political interventions.

It also evolved a policy decision to increase the number of awards by one in each subsequent year.

Incidentally, the selection of 51 awardees was a smooth affair during the President’s rule in the absence of lobbying and political interventions.

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