Announcement of the Jauhar award to former union minister Jagdish Tytler by a Delhi-based Maulana Muhammad Ali Jauhar Academy has kicked up a storm, with at least two eminent personalities -- Delhi's senior journalist Zafar Agha and Gujarat IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt -- refusing to accept the award.

Forty civil rights activists, including writers and journalists, on Monday issued an appeal to boycott the award ceremony slated at India Islamic Cultural Centre here on Saturday, expressing shock at the honour being bestowed to Tytler who is an accused in the anti-Sikh riots in 1984.

Those selected for the award include chief election commissioner SY Quraishi, Deoband municipal chairman Maulana Mohd Haseeb Siddiqui and Begum Andre, social activist and educationist from Mumbai.

In an appeal released by the activists at a press conference, the awardees were urged not to accept the award as a mark of protest against honouring Tytler, "whose contribution in the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom has been recorded by several fact-finding reports, including those by PUCL and PUDR".

The appeal says awarding a minority riot accused with an award named after Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar, a prominent figure of the Indian freedom movement, will be misuse of the name of the distinguished personality of Indian and Muslim history. The Maulana was the sixth Muslim president of the Congress Party and also a leader of the Khilafat movement.

The activists regretted that the award is being given by a religious minority group to person who has been found involved in bloody riot against another religious minority. "It is also regrettable that an award being given by members of a minority community is honouring someone who has played a key role in the victimisation of another religious minority," the appeal said.

The Maulana Muhammad Ali Jauhar Academy was founded in 1974 at Rampur in U.P. The award was instituted in 1989. This is 23th annual award ceremony. The academy gives award to individuals for their extra-ordinary contribution in their respective fields.