Guess who received most testimonials for Padma

The MHA (Ministry of Home Affairs) put out a list of recommendations received on the Padma Awards portal. For the 2017 Padma Awards, more than 18000 recommendations were received with one individual getting more than 4000 recommendations. Can you guess his name?
The government for the first time opened up the 2017 Padma Award recommendations and asked citizens to recommend individuals for various Padma Awards through a centralized web portal. A total of 89 individuals were finally given the Padma Awards for the year 2017.

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has recently released the list of recommendations received for the 2017 awards. An analysis of these recommendations reveals some very interesting insights. As per the list released by MHA, a total of 18,768 recommendations were received from various individuals, state governments and others. The most such recommendations came from Haryana (4438).

We will see why Haryana is on the top a little later in the story. 3200 recommendations were received from Maharashtra. More than 1000 recommendations each were received from 6 states. More than 500 recommendations each were received from 10 different states. Only one recommendation was received from Meghalaya, the least from any state.

In terms of city, the most number of recommendations were received form Sirsa in Haryana (more than 4000) followed by Ahmednagar (more than 1000). Only 46 of the awardees had recommendations from the portal. As per the list put out by the MHA, only 46 out of the 89 awardees were recommended by various people on the web portal.

The rest of the 43 were not recommended by anyone as per the MHA list. Out of those who were recommended and finally received an award, Shri Sadhu Meher received the most recommendations (13) followed by Shri Punam Suri (8). Two others received 6 recommendations each while four others received 5 recommendations each. Ten awardees received only one recommendation each. And further, only 3 of the 18 names recommended by the search committee were finally awarded.

Can you guess who topped the recommendation charts?
Am sure you wouldn’t have guessed his name right. The one who received the maximum number of recommendations on the portal is the leader of Dera Sacha Sauda, Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh. He received a total of 4203 recommendations on the portal with 4110 from Haryana, almost all of them from the city of Sirsa.

The data reveals the existence of a coordinated campaign to recommend him since 10 different individuals recommended his name more than 40 times each. In terms of sheer numbers, his recommendations account for more than 22% of all the recommendations on the portal. The next in the list of most number of recommendations is Shankarrao Genuji Kolhe, chairman of the Sanjivani group of educational institutions and a former minister from Maharashtra. He received more than 1000 recommendations, almost all of them from Ahmednagar, his hometown.

This also looks like a coordinated campaign. Another politician from Maharashtra, Vasant Nivrutti Pawar also received more than 300 recommendations. A total of 11 individuals received more than 100 recommendations each. Twenty-One (21) individuals received more than 50 recommendations each. In fact, 80 individuals received at least 14 recommendations each, but none of them were given the award. Arnab Goswami also received a recommendation from one Darpan Goel of Barpeta in Assam. There were a few dummy names also in the recommendation list. (Courtesy: https://factly.in)

By Surya Kandukuri