It is a pleasure for me to preside over this ceremony to present this year’s Pandit Govind Ballabh Pant Award for the Best Parliamentarian to Shri Atal Behari Vajpayee.

We had had a galaxy of great parliamentarians in our country. Out freedom movement was interspersed by constitutional and parliamentary struggles and by direct mass action through non-violent means. Pandit Govind Ballabh Pant was one of the versatile giants of this period who distinguished himself in the parliamentary arena, and made heroic sacrifices in the field of direct action. After independence he emerged as a parliamentarian par excellence, while devoting his energies in creative action for the building of modern India. His superb command of language, his debating skill, and his wit and humour made him the role model of an eminent parliamentarian. The institution of the Best Parliamentarian Award is a fitting memorial to him and an inspiration to those who are chosen to receive it from year to year.

I am glad that it has been decided to bestow this year’s Award on Shri Atal Behave Vajpayee. He is a Parliamentarian in the mould of Pandit Govind Ballabh Pant. We have seen him now for thirty-seven years in the Parliamentary forum through momentous events and grave crises. On all such occasions he made his impact on Parliament and the country through his overpowering reasoning and overflowing eloquence. His debating skill, his witticisms and repartees, and his poetic language made his speeches forceful and delightful. He is one of those who used Parliament as an educational forum as well as a political weapon and enhanced the prestige of the parliamentary institution. In 1987 Shri Vajpayee observed on the floor of the Rajya Sabha that however long the political career of a person might be, one did not know the real pulse of politics without an association with the Rajya Sabha. He has had experience of both Houses and in that sense he is the complete parliamentarian, and still growing, having returned to the Lok Sabha from what he called the “Parlok Sabha”.          

Winston Churchill was once asked what he valued most in his life. His answer was: “Two simple letters which come as suffix to my name, Winston Churchill M.P.” I believe our M.P’s also value this suffix in the same way. To be elected as a representative of the people is an honour and a trust. It is also a position of power if only one knows how to use it in the forum of Parliament.

I believe that a single well-reasoned, well articulated speech in Parliament will have more effect within and outside the House than a hundred demonstrations. While addressing the All India conference of Presiding Officers in 1992, Shri Vajpayee criticized those members who become too much publicity-conscious, and exhorted them to make quality speeches which can draw the attention of the public and the press: “The speech should be”’ he said, “such as can be read in the next Session as well. The speech should be such as can be read in the other House too and some of the speeches should be such as could be read by the next generation as well.” This is the ideal that the best Parliamentarian of the year has set before us.

A good speech is not merely an eloquent speech. The eloquence must reflect the mood of the people and the need of the nation. It must also try to mould the thinking of the people and suggest or at least hint at some approach to the solution of the problem at hand. Shri Vajpayee’s parliamentary speeches are marked not only by debating skill but by substance.

Among many pronouncements on national and international issues that he made, I should here refer to one instance only, concerning the lot of the lowliest and the lost in our society. In 1988 there was a massacre of Harijans at a place in Jahanabad in which all the men were killed, but the women fold spared. Vajpayeeji speaking in the Rajya Sabha said that he had inquired why that has happened. He said: “I got a reply that the murderers wanted that only the menfold should be killed and when the women would cry by beating their breasts they will enjoy the scene.

How cruel is it? Is it not beastly? Does it behove a civilized society? Are we really civilized?” Vajpayees said that the entire might of the machinery of Government should be used to deal with such situations. In this contex he made one suggestion, that at the viva voce examination for I.A.S. and I.P.S. selections the candidates should be asked if they believed in the Varna system. “If an officer believes in caste or varna and a man being high or low by birth, then he cannot do justice. Such an officer cannot maintain law and order during caste strife.” In that speech he touched upon a cardinal problem in our society which can be xpanded to apply to other types of social strife that recur in our country.

No description of Atalji as a parliamentarian can be complete without reference to his role as a Member of the government. His parliamentary experience, his power of reasoning, and his eloquence stood him in good stead when hewas Foreign Minister of India from 1977-79. I had a good fortune to work under his direction in the People’s Republic of china during a part of this period. The late Girilal Jain in an article once campared him to Nehru saying that Nehru was his model. We know that Atalji had differences with Nehru and “blasted” him in Parliament on occasions, but in his foreign policy he followed his footprintsas admitted by Atalji himself, but he followed him in his own way with a touch or originality.

Of Nehru he once remarked: “He may have committed mistakes. Who has not? But he gave dignity and sophistication to India’s political life and culture, and enriched them”. One may say that Atal behari Vajpayee himself has given, and is giving, dignity and sophistication to India’s political life, particularly to India’s parliamentary life. Shri Vajpayee once recalled that Nehru introduced him to Khrushchev in New York as a “bright young parliamentarian.” Today the brightyoung parliamentarian of the early Sixties is before us as the Best Parliamentarian. 

May I conclude by congratulating Atalji on this richly deserved Award for the Best Parliamentarian and by wishing him all the best in the years to come.

Thank you