The Padma Awards are conferred by the President of India at ceremonial functions which are held at Rashtrapati Bhawan usually around March/ April every year. In 2022, the President has approved conferment of 128 Padma Awards including 2 duo case (in a duo case, the Award is counted as one) as per list below. The list comprises 4 Padma Vibhushan, 17 Padma Bhushan and 107 Padma Shri Awards. 34 of the awardees are women and the list also includes 10 persons from the category of Foreigners/NRI/PIO/OCI and 13 Posthumous awardees.
This year’s Padma Awards were conferred on people from diverse fields including globally-acclaimed chief executives Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella, India’s first track and field Olympic gold medalist Neeraj Chopra, Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad, the late Chief of Defence Staff Gen Bipin Rawat, centenarian Assamese social worker Shakuntala Choudhury, 96-year-old philanthropist Baba Iqbal Singh of Punjab and Vijaykumar Vinayak Dongre, a doctor from Maharashtra who works among leprosy patients.
Padma Vibhushan
Kalyan Singh– Former Uttar Pradesh chief minister
General Bipin Rawat India’s first Chief of Defence Staff who died in a helicopter crash recently were awarded Padma Vibhushan.
Prabha Atre– an Indian classical vocalist from the Kirana gharana was also conferred Padma Vibhushan. Dr. Prabha Atre holds the world record to have released 11 books (from a single stage). She released 11 books on music in Hindi and English at India Habitat Centre, New Delhi on 18 April 2016.
Radheshyam Khemka (posthumously)– A journalist and the editor of Kalyan published by Gita Press for 38 years; also the Chairman of Gita Press Trust Board.
Padma Bhushan
Ghulam Nabi Azad– Veteran Congress leader
Devendra Jhajharia– A sportsman from Rajathan, Devendra Jhajharia is an Indian Paralympic javelin thrower competing in F46 events. He is the first Indian Paralympics player to win two gold medals at the Paralympics.
Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee- Former West Bengal CM and CPI(M) leader
Cyrus Poonawalla- of the Serum Institute of India, which manufactured COVID-19 vaccine Covishield
Krishna Ella and Suchitra Ella– Bharat Biotech, which produced India’s indigenous coronavirus vaccine Covaxin.
Satya Nadella-Microsoft CEO
Sundar Pichai– Google CEO
Gurmeet Bawa- Late Punjabi folk singer
Victor Banerjee– Victor Banerjee is an Indian actor who appears in English, Hindi, Bengali and Assamese language films. He has worked for directors such as Roman Polanski, James Ivory, Sir David Lean, Jerry London, Ronald Neame, Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, Shyam Benegal, Montazur Rahman Akbar and Ram Gopal Varma. He won the National film award for best supporting actor for the film Ghare Baire. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan for his contribution in the field of art.
Rajiv Mehrishi– Former Union Home Secretary
Rashid Khan– Ustad Rashid Khan (born 1 July 1968) is an Indian classical musician in the Hindustani music tradition. He belongs to the Rampur-Sahaswan gharana, and is the great-grandson of gharana founder Inayat Hussain Khan. He is married to Soma Khan.In a story told in several versions, Pandit Bhimsen Joshi once remarked that Rashid Khan was the “assurance for the future of Indian vocal music”
Madhur Jaffery– Miss Madhur Jaffrey is an Indian actress, food and travel writer, and television personality. She is recognized for bringing Indian cuisine to the western hemisphere with her debut cookbook, An Invitation to Indian Cooking (1973), which was inducted into the James Beard Foundation’s Cookbook Hall of Fame in 2006. She has written over a dozen cookbooks and appeared on several related television programmes, the most notable of which was Madhur Jaffrey’s Indian Cookery, which premiered in the UK in 1982.
Sanjaya Rajaram (Posthumous)- Dr. Sanjaya Rajaram (1943–2021) was an Indian-born Mexican scientist and winner of the 2014 World Food Prize. He was awarded this prize for his scientific research in developing 480 wheat varieties that have been released in 51 countries. This innovation has led to an increase in world wheat production – by more than 200 million tons – building upon the successes of the Green Revolution.[
Pratibha Ray– Pratibha Ray is an Indian academic and writer of Odia-language novels and stories. For her contribution to the Indian literature, Ray received the Jnanpith Award in 2011. She was the first woman to win the Moortidevi Award in 1991. Her first novel Barsha Basanta Baishakha (1974) was a best seller. She believes in social order based on equality, love, peace and integration and without class, caste, religion or sex discriminations.
Swami Sachidanand– Swami Sachchidanand (22 April 1932), born as Nanalal Motilal Trivedi, is an Indian social reformer, philosopher, welfare activist, humanitarian, religious ascetic and writer from Gujarat. He was awarded the Narmad Suvarna Chandrak in 1984.
Vashishth Tripathi– Prof Vashishth Tripathi, a renowned scholar of Nyay Shastra, and he is well known for his contribution to the field of literature and education. He taught Nyay Shastra in Sampurnanad Sanskrit University (SSU) and retired in 2000.
Padma Shri
Some of the notable names to be conferred with the prestigious Padma Shri Award include Olympic gold medallist Neeraj Chopra, Olympians Pramod Bhagat, and Vandana Kataria, and singer Sonu Nigam. Following are some other notable personalities who won Padma Shri:
Shakuntala Choudhury- The 102-year-old Shakuntala Choudhury devoted her life to the welfare and empowerment of women. Born in Guwahati, Choudhury started her career as a school teacher and joined the Kasturba Ashram in 1947. Ever since then, she has been associated with it and served it in various capacities.
Dr Prokar Dasgupta, United Kingdom -Professor Prokar Dasgupta is a clinician-scientist whose career started over 30 years ago when he began studying the immunology of a parasitic disease called Leishmaniasis. Contributing to academic excellence, Professor Dasgupta pioneered robotic urological surgery at Guy’s Hospital. In 2010 and 2018 he was named one of the top ten prostate cancer surgeons in the United Kingdom by the Daily Mail.
Dr Himmatrao Bawaskar, Maharashtra– Dr Himmatrao Bawaskar, 71-year-old physician’s path-breaking research on deaths caused by the sting of the red scorpion was appreciated by the medical fraternity worldwide. His work on 51 such cases was published in the Lancet in 1982.
Dr Kamlakar Tripathi, Uttar Pradesh– For his contribution in the field of medicine, Dr Kamalakar Tripathi, a former professor in the Department of Medicine, BHU Institute of Medical Sciences had been the Head of Nephrology Department.
Dr Sunkara Venkata Adinarayana Rao– Dr Sunkara Venkata Adinarayana Rao is a well-known doctor from Visakhapatnam. He was conferred with the Padma Shri Award for extending his services to thousands of polio victims. The 82-year-old orthopedic surgeon Adinarayana Rao is noted for his work for poor people.
Dr Krishna Mohan Pathi- Octogenarian doctor gives free treatment to poor patients on a daily basis in a village of Ganjam district. He went to England in 1972 as a Common Wealth Medical Fellow and worked at Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, Liverpool and Birmingham at the age of 32 years. Dr Pathi worked in Oxford University for three years. He travelled extensively, to at least 22 countries, and imparted education. Post-retirement, he came back to Sukunda and decided to dedicate himself to serve the poor. The retired professor has been conducting bone marrow test of the underprivileged including tribals free for more than three decades.
Lata Desai- Lata Desai, 75, a pediatrician, had co-founded the Society for Education Welfare and Action along with her late husband in 1980. SEWA Rural is a voluntary organization involved in health and development activities in the rural tribal area of Jhagadia in Bharuch, south Gujarat. Desai and her husband left their flourishing medical practice in New York to return home to serve to poor and they made Jhagadia their base. Their hospital serves approximately 70,000 outpatients and 12,000 indoor patients every year. Nearly 2,800 deliveries and 5,000 surgeries are conducted every year.
Baba Iqbal Singh– The 96-year-old educationist, social worker and philanthropist, Baba Iqbal Singh retired as the director of agriculture in the Himachal Pradesh government in 1986 and started a school on the foothills of Baru Sahib. Singh also set up the Kalgidhar Trust which anchors his work in rural education, drug de-addiction and women’s empowerment.
Vijay Kumar Dongre– 82-year-old Vijay Kumar Dongre, a doctor and social worker, has dedicated his life to working with leprosy patients for the last five decades. He has been working in urban, rural and tribal areas of Maharashtra. Before the Padma Shri, he was awarded the International Gandhi Award for Leprosy 2013 by former President Pranab Mukherjee. He has written 52 booklets on leprosy and given about 10,000 lectures on the disease.
Narendra Prasad Misra- Narendra Prasad Misra had led a team of doctors 37 years ago at the Gandhi Medical College Hamidia Hospital in Bhopal to save thousands of lives affected by the 1984 Bhopal Gas tragedy. After the treatment he continued his struggle and presented the case of the gas victims before a court in New York and succeeded in getting them compensation. During the first and second waves of the Covid pandemic when most doctors were rendering online consultancy to patients, Dr. Mishra kept treating his patients physically at the clinic, mostly free of cost. He was conferred this award posthumously. He died in September last year.
Prabhaben Shah- 91-year-old Prabhaben Shah, fondly called ‘Daman ki Divya,’ has worked for the betterment of the people, conducted awareness programmes and organised a ‘Vastra Bank’ for flood victims in Kutch. Shah has also started canteens for patients and the economically weaker sections in hospitals.
Khalil Ismail Makrani – popularly known by his pen-name, Khalil Dhantejvi was a poet and novelist from Gujarat and wrote poems in Gujarati and Urdu.
Acharya Chandana- Also Tai Maharaj, Chandanaji), belongs to the Amarmuni Sampradaya a Jain monastic lineage to have promoted a nun to the rank of Acharya. Chandana. She is known for introducing the concept of “seva” (‘service to humanity’) among the Jain. She founded Veerayatan—a non-profit, non-governmental service organization—which, as of 2013, has centers in more than ten countries.
Prof Vishwamurti Shastri- A renowned Sanskrit scholar Prof Vishwamurti Shastri from Jammu has been conferred with the Padma Shri for his contributions in Literature and education.
Basanti Devi- Basanti Devi has worked for women’s empowerment, environment conservation and a progressive mindset. Having faced the challenges of child marriage, she educated people about the ills of marrying girls before adulthood. She was widowed at the age of 12 in 1980, but she never gave up her zeal to bring about change. A Class IV dropout, she went door-to-door to explain to parents about the irreversible damage that early marriage can cause a child. She also spearheaded a campaign for afforestation along the Kosi river.
Madhuri Barthwal/ Uniyal– is a folk singer of Uttarakhand, India. She is the first woman to be a music composer in All India Radio. She is said to be the first female Garhwali musician to become a music teacher. On International Women’s Day in 2019 she was awarded the Nari Shakti Puraskar.
Sulochana Kadam/ Sulochana Chavan– is an Indian singer, known for her lavanis in Marathi. Amongst various others, her famous lavanis include “Tuzhya Usala Laagal Kolha”, “Padarawarti Jartaricha” both from film Malhari Martand (1965), “Solaawa Varees Dhokyacha”, “Kasa Kay Patil Bara Hay Ka?” both from film Sawaal Majha Aika! (1964). She has also recorded Hindi film and album songs.