New Delhi [India], January 26 (ANI): The recipients of the 2024 Padma Awards this year included personalities from all corners of the country and all segments of society making it ‘Peoples Awards’.

Among the awardees, 40 individuals are from the Other Backward Classes category, 11 from Scheduled Castes, and 15 from Scheduled Tribes.

The awardees also included nine Christians, eight Muslims, five Buddhists, three Sikhs, two Jains, two Parsis, and two from Indigenous Faiths.

The awardees included 49 octogenarians who were recognised for lifetime contributions. 10 districts have been recognised with the Padma Award for the first time since Independence. It has also covered 89 districts across 32 states.

Political veterans across parties, ideologies, and geographies have been presented with the Padma awards. Along with Bharat Ratna to Karpoori Thakur (Janta Party) for championing the cause of backwards, Chiranjeevi (INC) and Captain Vijayakant (DMDK) have also been recognised. This shows the ploitical bipartisanship of the Narendra Modi government.

The Awards have also celebrated Nari Shakti (women empowerment) by awarding 30 women from across regions and fields. It has represented many firsts, from the first female Supreme Court Judge (Fathima Beevi) to the first elephant Mahout (Parbati Barua) and first female Harikatha exponent (Uma Maheshwari).

It has broken barriers of caste and class by awarding Madhubani painter Shanti Devi Paswan and environmental activist Chami Murmu. Several women folk singers across genres like Rajbonshi folk from West Bengal (Gita Roy Barman) to Khasi folk of Meghalaya (Silbi Passah) and Kajri folk of Uttar Pradesh (Urmila Srivastava) were also awarded.

Among women recepients, the Padma Awards have recognised traditional weavers like Naseem Bano (Chikankari of Lucknow), Takdira Begum (Kantha of Bardhaman) and Smriti Rekha Chakma (Loinloom of Tripura).

In the field of arts, several film artists were recognised for lifelong contributions to cinema through acting, directing, singing and composing, across languages like Hindi, Telugu, Bengali, Tamil, Marathi and Punjabi. The awardees included Vyjayanthimala Bali, Chiranjeevi, Mithun Chakraborty, Rajdutt, Vijayakanth, Usha Uthup, Pyarelal, Nirmal Rishi and Pran Sabharwal.

The awardees included exponents of classical dances like Bharatnatyam (Padma Subhramanyam), Kathak (Ramlal Bareth) and Kathakali (Balakrishnan Sadanam Puthiya Veetil); Classical song genres like Darbhanga Gharana (Ram Kumar Mallick), Patiala Gharana (Som Dutt Battu), Baneras Gharana (Surendra Mohan Mishra) and Dhruvpad Gharana (Laxman Bhatt Tailang).

Folk dances from all corners of the world have been recognised. This included Dogri from Jammu Kashmir (Romalo Ram), Ojapali from Assam (Drona Bhyuan), Sabda Nrutya from Odisha (Bhagabat Padhan), Chhau from Bengal (Nepal Chandra Sutradhar), Valli Oyil Kummi from Tamil Nadu (Badrappan M), Theyyam from Kerala (Narayanan E P) and Chindu Yakshaganam from Telangana (Gaddam Sammalah).

Folk theatre from acroos the country like Mach from Madhya Pradesh (Omprakash Sharma), Behrupiya from Rajasthan (Jankilal) and Khasi Folk from Meghalaya (Silbi Passah) have also been recognized.

Folk singers like Ratan Kahar (Bhadu from West Bengal), Mahabir Singh Guddu (Haryanvi from Haryana), Urmila Srivastava (Kajari from Uttar Pradesh), Ali Mohammad and Ghani Mohammad (Maand Duo from Rajasthan) and Gita Roy Barman (Bhawaiya Rajbongshi from West Bengal) were also among the list of awardees.

Bhajankars Kaluram Bamaniya (Kabir Vani from Madhya Pradesh) and Gopinath Swain (Krishna Leela from Odisha) and musicians like Burra Veena player from Telangana, Dasari Kondappa and Nadaswaram player from Tamil Nadu, Seshampatti T Sivalingam, were also the recepients of the Padma awards.

The Padma awards have recognised folk painters like Shanti Devi and Shivan Paswan (Godna Madhubani from Bihar), Binod Maharana (Pattachitra from Odisha) and Ashok Kumar Biswas (Tikuli from Bihar); versatile craftsmen like Jordan Lepcha (Bamboo Lepcha craft from Sikkim), Babu Ram Yadav (Brass Marori from Uttar Pradesh), Machihan Sasa (Longpi Pottery from Manipur) and Ghulam Nabi Dar (Walnut wood carving from Jammu Kashmir) and Godawari Singh (Wood Toymaking from Uttar Pradesh)It has also awarded sculptors like Stapathi famed for Temples from Telangana (A Velu Ananda Chari) and Kumbhar known for sculpting Maa Durga Idols during Durga Pujo (Sanatan Rudra Pal).

Textile revivalists of Chikankari from Uttar Pradesh (Naseem Bano), Kantha from West Bengal (Takdira Begum), Chakma Loinloom from Tripura (Smriti Rekha Chakma) and Carpet Weaving from Uttar Pradesh (Khalil Ahmed) have been recognised as well.

The Padma awards have also recognised inspirational model farmers like Sarbeswar Basumatary, a tribal farmer employing modern agritech for better yield in Assam, K Chellammal, an organic farmer employing damage control measures against island crops in the Andamans, Yanung Jamoh Lego, a herbal medicine grower from Arunachal Pradesh, Sathyanarayana Beleri, a rice farmer preserving 650 rice varieties in Kerala and Sanjay Patil, an organic farmer using innovative water harvesting techniques in Goa.

Agricultural scientists across disciplines- from developing varieties of rice (Ram Chet Chaudhary), and high yielding Wheat (Ravi Prakash Singh) to promoting natural farming (Hari Om) and beekeeping (Ram Chandra Sihag) have also been awarded. The awardees also included scientists working in Ecology (Eklabya Sharma), Oceanography (Shailesh Nayak) and Arsenic Poisoning (Narayan Chakraborty).

The Padma Awards have also recognised lifelong service for treating illnesses like Sickle Cell (Yazdi Italia) to Kala Azar (C P Thakur), Burns (Prema Dhanraj) to Hepatitis (Radha Krishna Dhiman).

The awards have also been presented to individuals preserving indigenous medical knowledge in Ayurveda (Dayal Mavjibhai Parmar), yoga (Kiran Vyas and Charlotte Chopin), traditional medicine (Hemchand Manjhi) and homoeopathy (Radheyshyam Pareek).

The Padma Awards were presented to coaches in Archery (Purnima Mahto), Badminton (Gaurav Khanna), Hockey (Harbinder Singh) and Mallakhamb (Uday Deshpande).

For empowering Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs), Jageshwar Yadav’s work in empowering the Birhor tribe in Chhattisgarh and Somanna’s work with the Jenu Kuruba tribe in Karnataka has been awarded.

The Padma Awards have also recognized the contribution of individuals working for the future of children like Shankar Baba Pundlikrao Papalkar in Maharashtra and Sangthankima in Mizoram.

Over 62,000 nominations were received for the Padma Awards this year, which marked a 28-time increase from 2014. The recipients were decided after multiple rounds of scrutiny and consultation with over 250 experts, thereby continuing the journey of transforming the Padma Awards from ‘Government Awards’ to ‘Peoples Awards’. (ANI)