Lotus Crushers

It's unfortunate that we’ve been hearing frequent complaints about the selection of Padma awardees over the past 7-8 years, especially ...

It’s unfortunate that we’ve been hearing frequent complaints about the selection of Padma awardees over the past 7-8 years, especially from the fields of culture and medicine. Padma awards are the highest honours for any Indian and taken very seriously. But till date, nobody knows how the committee responsible for selecting the Padma awardees is constituted. There are no guidelines for choosing its members, and the nature of the committee depends on the whims and fancies of a few. By convention, the Cabinet Secretary is the chairman of the committee, and he should oversee the selection process. The members of the committee need to be chosen with discretion. At least we shouldn’t be hearing such strange logic from one of the members that two Khans cannot be honoured in the same category! If two Guptas, Sharmas and Iyers can be honoured together, what’s wrong with two Khans?

Besides, there are ministries that don’t take their responsibility in such matters seriously enough. Despite repeated reminders, the Union Sports Ministry didn’t recommend Rahul Dravid’s name for Padmashree to the committee this year. Thus, we won’t have any cricketer of eminence in this year’s Padma awardee list. We should have a subcommittee headed by the Cabinet Secretary which should forward its recommendations to a panel headed by the Home Minister himself. Alternatively, the exercise could be left to the Presidential Secretariat, which isn’t exactly overstressed with work. In such a set-up, Cabinet Secretariat and the Home Ministry should only have the recommending power, and the final decisions should be taken by the Presidential Secretariat. The only good trend about Padma awards that has emerged over the past few years is that journalists are also being considered for the awards.

Mayawati Smiles, Finally

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati seems to be softening her stance on caste, as is evident from the large number of upper caste invitees to her birthday party at New Delhi’s Talkatora stadium. In fact, you could spot senior Brahmin and Rajput Kayashta bureaucrats hanging around Mayawati to wish her, and the chief minister even smiled in return. Even in Lucknow, ministers belonging to upper castes are feeling the difference. Mayawati treats them much more respectfully, rather than humiliating them. Her new attitude reflects most clearly in the selection of her chief troubleshooter during the recent rebel legislator crisis: none other than Amarmani Tripathi is playing Behenji’s Man Friday and has been entrusted with the crucial task of managing support of individual MLAs to keep the government’s troubled boat sailing.

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Mayawati also kept her family members away from the limelight at her birthday. They were made to sit in the third row and were called on to the dais only when the giant cake was sliced and dished out. It is also not correct that she failed to assemble union ministers together; in fact, a number of union ministers wanted to attend the party but Mayawati politely told them that she wasn’t inviting any. Even the presence of BJP general secretary Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and UP strongman Lalji Tandon was more symbolic than strategic.

Pawar Cracking Sonia Ice

The selection of Sushil Kumar Shinde as Maharashtra Chief Minister is a clear indication that Sonia Gandhi and Sharad Pawar are coming closer. It’s not correct that Vilasrao Deshmukh was sacked because he was getting close to Pawar; rather, Pawar and his Man Friday Praful Patel were trying their level best to get Shinde into the chief minister’s chair. In this, they were helped by Vayalar Ravi. Sonia gave Shinde the green signal once she realised that the former Pawar aide would bring the two Congresses close to each other.

Pawar has, of late, stopped criticising Sonia and hasn’t raised the foreigner issue even once. The only NCP man gunning for Sonia over the past few months has been Purno Sangma because of his obsession with the foreign origin issue. In fact, Sangma, rather than Pawar, was the major architect of the NCP when it broke away from the Congress.