BANGALORE: The Government has come under fire for conferring the Devaraj Urs Award on the Kannada poet K.S. Nisar Ahmed.

An organisation called the Forum for Social Justice has demanded that the Government withdraw the award on the ground that "the selection of a person with questionable qualifications" had violated the sanctity of the award.

The former Minister and convener of the forum, A. Laxmisagar, told presspersons here on Tuesday that the Government had selected Prof. Ahmed at the last minute after dropping J. Srinivasan, a former official and an AHINDA activist working for social justice, who was first selected for the award. The reason for this was purely political, he said.

Prof. Laxmisagar clarified that the forum was not against Prof. Ahmed. If the Government wanted to honour the poet it should have given him some other literary award and not the Devaraj Urs Award. The objective of the award was to recognise and honour those who had worked or were working for the cause of social justice. Previous governments had set a tradition by honouring persons such as L.G. Havanur, Ganapathiyappa, Kolluru Mallappa and M. Veerappa Moily in recognition of their contribution to the cause of social justice. The contribution of Prof. Ahmed was questionable, he argued.

Prof. Laxmisagar and N.V. Narasimhaiah said the forum would launch an agitation against the Government till it withdrew the award and presented it to a deserving person.

Mr. Srinivasan said that when officials from the Department of Social Welfare asked him to suggest names for the award, he put forward the names of the late B. Krishnappa of the Dalit Sangharsh Samiti and the late Shantaveri Gopala Gowda. But on August 18 he was surprised to learn from the Government that he had been selected. Two officials came to his residence to collect information about him and 50 passport-size photographs to be distributed to the media. But on August 19, the personal secretary to the Minister for Social Welfare informed him that the Government had selected Prof. Ahmed.

He charged that the Government did that because he had identified himself with the AHINDA movement and criticised JD(S) president H.D. Deve Gowda and the government headed by H.D. Kumaraswamy.

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