Govt says no faux pas committed in selection

Seeking to set at rest the controversy over Padma award given to a Kashmiri businessman, the government has categorically stated that no "faux pas" was committed in the selection.

Seeking to set at rest the controversy over Padma award given to a Kashmiri businessman, the government has categorically stated that no "faux pas" was committed in the selection.

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"There is no faux pas. Please wait for the ceremony and the citation," Union Home Minister P Chidambaram told reporters when asked about the inclusion in the art category of Hashmat Ullah Khan, an exporter from Jammu and Kashmir, in the list of Padma Shri awardees, even though he was not a craftsman.

Chirdambaram said the committee, which cleared the Padma awardees list, found him "fit" to recommend his name for the award and the citation will say why he was selected.

Officials in the President's Secretariat, soon after the controversy broke out, had said that they had nothing to do with the antecedents of the awardees as the Home Ministry sent the list after a thorough scrutiny.

The Home Ministry, on the other, tried to pass the buck to the President's Secretariat and cited an example when the then President A P J Abdul Kalam had struck off the name of a person whose name was included in the list of Padma awardees.