The Outstanding Parliamentarian Award is an award given by the Indian Parliamentary Group to an outstanding sitting Member of the Indian Parliament for overall contribution in the Indian Parliament. It was instituted in 1992 by Shivraj Patil, who was the Speaker of Lok Sabha from 1991 to 1996.
Contents
Recipients
Outstanding Parliamentarian Awards
- 1992 - Indrajit Gupta
- 1994 - Atal Bihari Vajpayee
- 1995 - Chandra Shekhar
- 1996 - Somnath Chatterjee
- 1997 - Pranab Mukherjee
- 1998 - S. Jaipal Reddy
- 1999 - Lal Krishna Advani
- 2000 - Arjun Singh
- 2001 - Jaswant Singh
- 2002 - Manmohan Singh
- 2003 - Sharad Pawar
- 2004 - Sushma Swaraj
- 2005 - P. Chidambaram
- 2006 - Mani Shankar Aiyar
- 2007 - Priyaranjan Das Munshi
- 2008 - Mohan Singh
- 2009 - Murli Manohar Joshi
- 2010 - Arun Jaitley
- 2011 - Karan Singh
- 2012 - Sharad Yadav
Criticism
It has been observed that the award has been awarded in a pattern to senior leaders of major political parties so as to please everyone rather than on the basis of merit and actual conduct of these MPs. Questions have being raised on the need, seriousness and authenticity of the exercise to present the ‘Outstanding Parliamentarian Award’ with the Government combining the results of three years and awarding them to parliamentarians — one from the ruling, one from the Opposition and one for others — for the second consecutive time in 2012.