On the eve of the 72nd Republic Day, the Government of India has announced that the conferment of 141 Padma Awards has been approved by the President of India this year. The list of the awardees comprises 7 Padma Vibhushan, 16 Padma Bhushan and 118 Padma Shri Awards. Reportedly, 34 of the awardees are women and the list also includes 18 persons from the category of Foreigners/NRI/PIO/OCI and 12 Posthumous awardees.
Padma awards 2021
Padma Vibhushan is awarded for exceptional and distinguished service; Padma Bhushan for distinguished service of a high order and Padma Shri for distinguished service in any field.
The Home Ministry announced that the former union ministers Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj and George Fernandes, Olympian boxer Mary Kom, former Mauritius prime minister Anerood Jugnauth, famous classical bhajan singer from Varanasi Channulal Mishra and Vishveshateertha Swamiji Sri Pejavara Adhokhaja Matha Udupi are being awarded the Padma Vibhushan, India’s second-highest civilian honour.
Former defence minister late Manohar Parrikar, industrialists Anand Mahindra and Venu Shrinivasan, Olympian badminton player P V Sindhu, former Nagaland chief minister S C Jamir, Jammu and Kashmir politician Muzaffar Hussain Baig and Late Prof N Professor N R Madhava Menon have been awarded the Padma Bhushan, the third-highest civilian award.
Talking about the fourth highest civilian award of the country i.e. the Padma Shri awards the list comprises 118 recipients comprising filmmakers Karan Johar and Ekta Kapoor and actor Kangana Ranaut, singers Suresh Wadkar and Adnan Sami and veteran TV actor Sarita Joshi.
Six sportspersons including cricketer Zaheer Khan, current Indian women’s hockey captain Rani Rampal, former Indian men’s hockey player M P Ganesh, shooter Jitu Rai, former Indian women’s football team captain Oinam Bembem Devi and archer Tarundeep Rai have also been awarded the Padma Shri.
Naukri.com founder Sanjeev Bikhchandani, industrialist Bharat Goenka, technocrat Nemnath Jain, Lucknow-based historian and journalist Yogesh Praveen and Assam-based historian Jogendra Nath Phukan have been awarded Padma Shri.
Apart from these, there are 21 ‘unsung’ heroes who were given Padma Shri this year including Jagdish Lal Ahuja, who serves free food to patients and attendants outside PGI hospital in Chandigarh; Mohammed Sharif from Faizabad, who has performed last rites of over 25,000 unclaimed bodies’ irrespective of their religion and veterinarian from Assam Kushal Konwar Sarma who is known for treating elephants.
Seventy-two-year-old Tulasi Gowda from Karnataka, who earned the sobriquet “encyclopedia of forests” because of her vast knowledge of diverse plants species in spite of lacking formal education, Sathyanarayan Mundayoor, known as Uncle Moosa of Arunachal Pradesh, who has been promoting education and reading culture in remote areas of Northeastern states for last four decades, Abdul Jabbar aka ‘voice of Bhopal’ (posthumously), known for fighting for the cause of victims and survivor of 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy, and Usha Chaumar, a Dalit social worker working in the field of sanitation in Rajasthan, have also been given the Padma Shri award.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated the Padma awardees, saying they include extraordinary people. He tweeted, “Congratulations to all those who have been conferred the Padma Awards.”
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