NEW DELHI: Late Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat, who died in a helicopter mishap, and former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and former Rajasthan Governor Kalyan Singh have been awarded posthumously the Padma Vibhushan, the highest civilian award granted every year.
Two other getting this award are Ms Prabha Atre from Maharashtra in Art and Radheyshyam Khemka (posthmous) of Uttar Pradesh in literature and education. The second highest award of Padm Bhushan for 2022 has been awarded to 17, including former Rajya Sabha Opposition leader Ghulam Nabi Azad of the Congress.
Another 107 have been awarded the Padma Shri award. Among the Padm winners are 34 women, 13 posthumous and 10 foreigners or NRIs.
Other Padma Bhushan award winners are: Ms Gurmeet Bawa (posthumous) from Punjab, Victor Banerjee from West Bengal, former West Bengal chief minister Buddhdeb Bhattacharjee of CPI(M), Rajiv Mehrishi, a Rajasthan cadre IAS officer who rose to be union home secretary and comptroller and auditor general of Indi, Cyrus Poonawalla, Managing Director of the Serum Institute of India from Pune that gave us the first Covid-19 vaccine Covishiel in trade and industry category, Sunder Pichai(49) and Satya Narayana Nadella, both from US, Rashid Khan in art from UP, Ms Pratibha Ray from Odisha, Swami Sachidanand from Gujarat and Vashishth Tripathi from Uttar Pradesh (all three in literature and education category) and Sanjay Rajaram (posthumous) from Mexico.
The Padma Shri awardees include Prof. Najma Akhtar and J K Bajaj in literature and education from Delhi, Prahlad Agarwala from West Bengal, Sumit Anil in sports from Haryana, T Senko Ao from Nagaland, Ms Kamalini Asthana and Ms Nalini Asthana (Duo) in Art from Uttar Pradesh and Subbanna Ayyappan from Karnataka.
