Top Lok Sabha performers to be awarded in Chennai

Chennai, April 7 (IANS) Two Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) members of parliament and one each from Shiv Sena and Congress would be honoured on April 14 with the Sansad Ratna Award-2012 for raising the highest number of questions and participating in debates.

The awards are being given by the city-based Prime Point Foundation on Ambedkar Jayanti April 14.

"According to the data compiled by PRS Legislative Research as on 30 March 2012, Shiv Sena's Anandrao Adsul, BJP's Hansraj Gangaram and Arjun Ram Meghwal and Congress's S.S. Ramasubbu rank as the top performers in terms of raising the highest number of questions, introduction of private member's bills, participation in debates and attendance," K. Srinivasan, founder, Prime Point Foundation, told IANS.

Raising 754 questions, Adsul has bagged the top position while Gangaram has bagged the award for introducing 20 private member's bills, he said.

"The BJP MP from Rajasthan, Meghwal, claims the top honours for participating in the highest number of debates (251) and has 100 percent attendance. Congress's Ramasubbu is not only the top performing MP from Tamil Nadu but also ranks third on the overall category - questions+debates+private bills - after Adsul and Gangaram," Srinivasan said.

Interestingly, two of the award winning MPs - Adsul and Gangaram - are from Maharashtra.

Srinivasan said the foundation has been awarding the top performers in the Lok Sabha since 2009.

"Former West Bengal governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi will preside over the award function to be held at IIT-Madras. Former MP Era Sezhiyan and IIT-Madras director Bhaskar Ramamurthi would be the chief guests at the function," Srinivasan said.

According to him, two panel discussions on 'Youth in Politics and Governance -Challenges and Opportunities' and 'Role of Civil Society' are also slated as part of the award function.

Speaking about the award, Meghwal said: "There is lot of negativity in the media and other areas. Unless somebody talks about the positive aspects and positive people, there will be only negative feeling all round."