Bharat Ratna Award Winners

Updated on 25 May 2020

By Daily Current Affairs

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Updated on 25 May 2020

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‘Bharat Ratna’,

The highest civilian Award of the country, was instituted in the year 1954. Any person without distinction of race, occupation, position or sex is eligible for these awards. It is awarded in recognition of exceptional service/performance of the highest order in any field of human endeavour. The recommendations for Bharat Ratna are made by the Prime Minister himself to the President. No formal recommendations for this are necessary. The number of annual awards is restricted to a maximum of three in a particular year. On conferment of the award, the recipient receives a Sanad (certificate) signed by the President and a medallion.

Bharat Ratna is the highest civilian award in the country. The first-ever Indians to receive this award were Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, C. V. Raman, and C. Rajagopalachari. Till date 48 awards have been given. Pranab Mukherjee, Nanaji Deshmukh, Bhupen Hazarika are the latest recipients of this prestigious Bharat Ratna award 2019.

History

2 January 1954, a press communiqué was released from the office of the secretary to the President announcing the creation of two civilian awards—Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian award, and the three-tier Padma Vibhushan, classified into "Pahela Warg" (Class I), "Dusra Warg" (Class II), and "Tisra Warg" (Class III), which rank below the Bharat Ratna. On 15 January 1955, the Padma Vibhushan was reclassified into three different awards; the Padma Vibhushan, the highest of the three, followed by the Padma Bhushan and the Padma Shri.

There is no formal provision that recipients of the Bharat Ratna should be Indian citizens. It has been awarded to a naturalised Indian citizen, Mother Teresa in 1980, and to two non-Indians, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan of Pakistan in 1987 and the former South African president Nelson Mandela in 1990. M.S. Subbulakshmi from Tamil Nadu became the first musician to receive the honour. Sachin Tendulkar, at the age of 40, became the youngest person and first sportsperson to receive the honour. In a special ceremony on 18 April 1958, Dhondo Keshav Karve was awarded on his 100th birthday. As of 2015, the award has been conferred upon 45 people with 12 posthumous declarations.

The award was briefly suspended twice in its history. The first suspension occurred after Morarji Desai was sworn in as the fourth Prime Minister in 1977. His government withdrew all personal civil honours on 13 July 1977. The suspension was rescinded on 25 January 1980, after Indira Gandhi became the Prime Minister. The civilian awards were suspended again in mid-1992, when two Public-Interest Litigations were filed, one in the Kerala High Court and another in the Madhya Pradesh High Court, challenging the "constitutional validity" of the awards. The awards were reintroduced by the Supreme Court in December 1995, following the conclusion of the litigation

Bharat Ratna Award : List of recipients

Bharat Ratna Award : List of recipients
S.No.	NAME	AWARDED IN
1	Shri Chakravarti Rajagopalachari	(1878-1972) 1954
2	Dr. SarvapalliRadhakrishnan	(1888-1975) 1954
3	Dr. ChandrasekharaVenkata Raman	(1888-1970) 1954
4	Dr. Bhagwan Das	(1869-1958) 1955
5	Dr. MokshagundamVisvesvaraya	(1861-1962) 1955
6	Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru	(1889 -1964) 1955
7	Pt. GovindBallabh Pant	(1887-1961) 1957
8	Dr. DhondoKeshavKarve	(1858-1962) 1958
9	Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy	(1882-1962) 1961
10	Shri Purushottam Das Tandon	(1882-1962) 1961
11	Dr. Rajendra Prasad	(1884-1963) 1962
12	Dr. Zakir Husain	(1897-1969) 1963
13	Dr. PandurangVaman Kane	(1880-1972) 1963
14	Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri (Posthumous)	(1904-1966) 1966
15	Smt. Indira Gandhi	(1917-1984) 1971
16	Shri VarahagiriVenkataGiri	(1894-1980) 1975
17	Shri KumaraswamyKamraj (Posthumous)	(1903-1975) 1976
18	Mother Mary Teresa Bojaxhiu (Mother Teresa)	(1910- 1997) 1980
19	Shri Acharya VinobaBhave (Posthumous)	(1895-1982) 1983
20	Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan	(1890-1988) 1987
21	Shri MarudurGopalan Ramachandran (Posthumous)	(1917-1987) 1988
22	Dr.Bhim Rao RamjiAmbedkar (Posthumous)	(1891-1956) 1990
23	Dr. Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela	(1918-2013) 1990
24	Shri Rajiv Gandhi (Posthumous)	(1944-1991) 1991
25	SardarVallabhbhai Patel (Posthumous)	(1875-1950) 1991
26	Shri MorarjiRanchhodji Desai	(1896-1995) 1991
27	MaulanaAbulKalam Azad (Posthumous)	(1888-1958) 1992
28	Shri JehangirRatanjiDadabhai Tata	(1904-1993) 1992
29	Shri Satyajit Ray	(1922-1992) 1992
30	Shri Gulzarilal Nanda	(1898-1998) 1997
31	Smt. ArunaAsaf Ali (Posthumous)	(1909-1996) 1997
32	Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam	(1931-2015) 1997
33	Smt. Madurai ShanmukhavadivuSubbulakshmi	(1916- 2005) 1998
34	Shri Chidambaram Subramaniam	(1910-2000) 1998
35	Shri Jayaprakash Narayan (Posthumous)	(1902-1979) 1999
36	Professor Amartya Sen	(b-1933) 1999
37	LokpriyaGopinathBordoloi (Posthumous)	(1890-1950) 1999
38	Pandit Ravi Shankar	(1920-2012) 1999
39	SushriLataDinanathMangeshkar	(b-1929) 2001
40	UstadBismillah Khan	(1916-2006) 2001
41	PanditBhimsenGururaj Joshi	(1922-2011) 2009
42	Prof. C. N. R. Rao	(b-1934) 2014
43	Shri Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar	(b-1973) 2014
44	Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee	(1924-2018) 2015
45	Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya (Posthumous)	(1861-1946) 2015
46	Shri NanajiDeshmukh (Posthumous)	(1916-2010) 2019
47	Dr. Bhupendra Kumar Hazarika (Posthumous)	(1926-2011) 2019
48	Shri Pranab Mukherjee	(b-1935) 2019