AK Antony, Owaisi, O’Brien, Vandana Chavan among 8 to get Lokmat Parliamentary Awards

   By Vijay Darda | 14-03-2022

Bhartruhari Mahtab, Tejaswi Surya, Locket Chatterjee, Manoj Kumar Jha other winners

Vijay Darda

Senior Congress leader AK Antony, Biju Janata Dal’s Bhartruhari Mahtab, TMC’s Derek O’Brien, NCP’s Vandana Chavan, BJP’s Tejaswi Surya and Locket Chatterjee, AIMIM’s Asaduddin Owaisi and RJD’s Prof. Manoj Kumar Jha were unanimously selected recipients in the fourth (2022) edition of the Lokmat Parliamentary Awards.

The prestigious awards are given annually to the best members of parliament in eight different categories (four each from Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha) for their outstanding contribution.

They were selected by a distinguished jury headed by NCP president Sharad Pawar during a meeting here. The other jury members are chairman of editorial board of Lokmat Media and former member of Rajya Sabha Vijay Darda, former Union minister Suresh Prabhu, RSP MP NK Premachandran, former Rajya Sabha general secretary Yogendra Narayan, founder and editor-in-chief of The Print Shekhar Gupta, news director of TV9 Bharatvarsh Hemant Sharma, national editor of Lokmat Media group Harish Gupta and senior editor (Business-Politics) of Lokmat Media group Sharad Gupta.

The other jury members former Union minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, Trinamool Congress MP Saugata Roy and former chief election commissioner S Y Qureshi, could not attend the meeting due to other engagements, while another member of the jury board BJD MP Bhartruhari Mahtab, recused himself from the selection process as he was also a nominee.

The jury examined the parliamentary contributions of all MPs for the years 2020 and 2021 to select the winners. Lokmat Parliamentary Awards were instituted in 2017 to recognize and encourage the constructive work MPs do throughout the year. In 2017, 2018 and 2019, the best members of Parliament were awarded at the hands of Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu. The awards remained suspended for the last two years due to Covid-19 pandemic.

Senior Congress leader AK Antony and Mahtab were nominated in the Lifetime Achievement Award category from the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha respectively. Derek O’Brien (Rajya Sabha) and Asaduddin Owaisi (Lok Sabha) were named Parliamentarians of the Year. NCP’s Vandana Chavan (Rajya Sabha) and BJP MP Locket Chatterjee (Lok Sabha) were adjudged best women parliamentarians. Rashtriya Janata Dal MP Prof. Manoj Kumar Jha (Rajya Sabha) and BJP MP Tejaswi Surya (Lok Sabha) were selected as the best newcomer MPs.

Former prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh, Lal Krishna Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Sharad Pawar, Mulayam Singh, Sharad Yadav, Sitaram Yechury, Jaya Bachchan, Supriya Sule, Nishikant Dubey, Hema Malini, Bharati Pawar, Sushmita Dev, Meenakshi Lekhi and Dr Rajni Patil have been the recipients of this prestigious award in the previous editions.

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