Padma Awards, one of the highest civilian Awards of the country, have been announced on Monday. Padma Awards are conferred in three categories, namely, Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, late singer S P Balasubrahmanyam, eminent cardiologist from Karnataka Belle Monappa Hegde, archaeologist B B Lal and father of fibre optics late Narinder Singh Kapany are among seven people who were chosen for the Padma Vibhushan on the eve of Republic Day.
Here is the full list of awardees:
Spiritual leader Maulana Wahiduddin Khan and Odiya sculptor Sudarshan Sahoo were also chosen for Padma Vibhushan.
The illustrious Kannada writer Chandrashekhar Kambar, former Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi and former Union Minister Ramvilas Paswan, were among ten people chosen for Padma Bhushan.
This year, the President has approved conferment of 119 Padma awards, including 102 Padma Shri awards. Twenty-nine of the awardees are women while 10 are from the category of Foreigners/NRI/PIO/OCI, 16 posthumous awardees and one transgender awardee. Interestingly, the list of 119 did not have any big names from the Bollywood or world of cricket.
One of the prominent Padma Shri winners is Karnataka Janapada Academy president and folk artiste Matha B Manjamma Jogati, the first transgender to hold such a position.
The Padma Bhushan list was dominated by politicians and it included former Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan and former Gujarat Chief Minister late Keshubhai Patel. Former MP Tarlochan Singh, who also headed National Commission for Minorities, was another Padma Bhushan winner.
Among politicians, former Goa Governor late Mridula Sinha and former Guwahati MP Bijaya Chakrabarty also figured in the list as they were selected for Padma Shri.
Nripendra Mishra, the chairman of the committee for the construction of Ram Temple in Ayodhya and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's former Principal Secretary, also found his name in the Padma Bhushan list.
Well-known singer K S Chitra, who sang in all south Indian languages and Hindi among others, Shia leader late Kalbe Sadiq and industrialist Rajnikant Devidas Shroff, the founder of United Phosphorus Limited and hailed as India’s ‘Crop Protection King, were also chosen for Padma Bhushan.
Besides Hegde and Kambar, who won the top two Padma awards, there are three more winners from Karnataka -- Jogati, an applied mathematician and Electrical engineering professor Rangasami L Kashyap and para-sportsperson K Y Venkatesh.
Among the Padma Shri winners are theatre personality Peter Brooks, whose staging of Mahabharata had attracted international attention, Carnatic vocalist Bombay Jayashree, who also sung film songs including in Kannada and economist and Harvard Business School Dean Srikant Datar.
Sindhutai Sakpal (71), who hails from Maharashtra and known as ‘Maai’ and the ‘Mother of Orphans’, is another winner of Padma Shri. She is considered a mother to over 1400 children and a grandmother to more than a thousand.
Jaswantiben Jamnadas Popat, the founder of Lijjat papad, is also among the winners of Padma Shri.
From Tamil Nadu, Solomon Papaiah, the 84-year-old scholar and a TV debate moderator, won the Padma Shri awards. Another Padma Shri winner Chaman Lal Sapru, was the first Hindi lecturer in Jammu and Kashmir and known for his literary works.