Awards & Appointments

The President approved 131 awards, counting two duo cases as one each, made up of 5 Padma Vibhushan, 13 Padma Bhushan and 113 Padma Shri

The list included 19 women, 16 posthumous awards and 6 from the foreigner, NRI, PIO or OCI category

The names come out on Republic Day, and the investiture ceremonies are held at Rashtrapati Bhavan around March or April

Months separate the two, so a question that asks when someone received an award is asking about a different date from the one on which the award was announced

The Dadasaheb Phalke Award 2024 goes to the veteran actor Anant Nag, to be conferred at the 72nd National Film Awards ceremony scheduled for 22 September 2026 at Kevadia, Gujarat.

His acting debut was in the Kannada feature film Sankalp, and his Hindi debut was in Ankur. He received the Padma Bhushan in 2025.

The award was instituted in 1969, when it was presented to Devika Rani.

Both are chess players, and both are on the 2025 Arjuna Award list.

A Selection Committee chaired by Justice (Retd.) Arun Kumar Mishra, a former Judge of the Supreme Court, chose the awardees.

The Arjuna Award (Lifetime) went to I Arumainayagam, for football.

She was recognised for leading sustainable cooling and heat adaptation in Tamil Nadu.

Her work includes the Cool Roof project and nature-based adaptation.

Champions of the Earth is UNEP's award, described as the UN's highest environmental honour.

UNEP is headquartered in Nairobi, where the 2025 laureates were announced.

Tamil Nadu officially recognised heat as a state-specific disaster, which opens disaster funds to heat relief.

UNEP cites this as one of the reasons for her award.

He took over as Chair of the Council of Member States of the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance.

India is a founding member of International IDEA.

International IDEA is based in Stockholm, where the Chief Election Commissioner took over the chair.

Geneva hosts the Inter-Parliamentary Union, a different body.

The Akademi gives awards in the 24 languages it recognises.

22 is the number of languages in the Eighth Schedule; the Akademi also recognises English and Rajasthani.

The Hindi award went to the memoir 'Jeete Jee Allahabad'.

'Safar Jaari Hai' won for Urdu, 'Crimson Spring' for English and 'Kalyanilya Resha' for Marathi.

'Crimson Spring' won the English award, in the novel category.

The Hindi winner was a memoir, and the Punjabi winner a short-story collection.

For 2025 the Akademi invited books directly from authors, publishers and well-wishers for the first time, through an open advertisement.

The award money stayed at ₹1,00,000.

The President conferred the awards on 48 school teachers.

21 is the number of higher-education and polytechnic teachers honoured separately.

Teachers' Day honours Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, philosopher and India's second President.

Maulana Azad's birthday, 11 November, is National Education Day.

They honour nurses; 15 received them in 2026.

They are presented on International Nurses Day, 12 May.

They are presented on International Nurses Day, 12 May, Florence Nightingale's birthday.

In 2026 the President conferred them on 15 nurses.

15 Vir Chakras were conferred, 3 of them posthumous.

7 were Kirti Chakras and 29 Shaurya Chakras.

The President confers them at Rashtrapati Bhavan; Phase I of 2026 was on 8 June.

The awards are announced earlier, on Republic Day or Independence Day.

She approved 78 gallantry awards, 13 of them posthumous.

89 is the number of Mentions-in-Despatches; 127 was the Independence Day 2025 figure.

There were 9 Kirti Chakras, 7 of them posthumous.

19 is the number of Shaurya Chakras.

The Kirti Chakra is the second-highest peacetime gallantry award, for bravery otherwise than in the face of the enemy.

The wartime series, for the presence of the enemy, is the Param Vir, Maha Vir and Vir Chakra.

AVM Shakti Sharma, of the IAF's Education Branch, reached the rank on 1 September 2026.

The other three are officers of the medical services, which is why the record says 'non-medical'.

Air Vice Marshal, Major General and Rear Admiral are the three services' two-star ranks.

Lieutenant General equals Air Marshal, one rank higher.

Rimo Saha was the award's water-adventure winner for 2024.

Baljeet Kaur and Skalzang Rigzin won for land adventure; Shiv Prasad Chamoli for lifetime achievement.

They reached the summit on 29 May 1953.

The national adventure award is named after Tenzing Norgay.

The APPU is headquartered in Bangkok, where its 14th Congress was held.

Bern is the headquarters of the Universal Postal Union itself.

The UPU was founded in 1874 in Bern.

The ITU is the UN agency for telecommunications, not post.

'Article 370' won Best Feature Film, and its lead Yami Gautam won Best Actress.

'Amaran' won Best Direction, for Rajkumar Periasamy.

Devika Rani received the first Phalke Award.

Nargis won the first Best Actress National Award, in 1968.

Their discoveries on nucleoside base modifications made effective mRNA vaccines possible.

mRNA vaccines were used widely against COVID-19.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee named Narges Mohammadi on 6 October 2023.

Nihon Hidankyo won in 2024; Maria Ressa in 2021; Malala Yousafzai in 2014.

The 2024 recipients were P. V. Narasimha Rao, Charan Singh, M. S. Swaminathan, Karpoori Thakur and L. K. Advani.

Pranab Mukherjee received the Bharat Ratna in 2019.

Swaminathan led the introduction of high-yielding wheat and rice varieties in the 1960s, the Green Revolution.

The White Revolution (Operation Flood) is associated with Verghese Kurien.

M. Venkaiah Naidu received the Padma Vibhushan for public affairs in 2024.

He was Vice-President from 2017 to 2022.

Nihon Hidankyo is the Japanese movement of survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs.

The World Food Programme won in 2020 and ICAN in 2017.

The prize recognised discoveries that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.

Attosecond pulses won physics in 2023; quantum dots won chemistry in 2023.

Sanjay Malhotra took charge on 11 December 2024.

He succeeded Shaktikanta Das, the 25th Governor.

The RBI began operations on 1 April 1935, under the RBI Act, 1934.

It was nationalised in 1949.

For 2025 there were 7 Padma Vibhushan, 19 Padma Bhushan and 113 Padma Shri — 139 in all.

2024 had 5 Padma Vibhushan.

Sharda Sinha, known for her songs of Chhath, was given the Padma Vibhushan posthumously.

Kumudini Lakhia, also a Padma Vibhushan awardee in 2025, is a Kathak dancer from Gujarat.

Banu Mushtaq wrote the stories in Kannada; Deepa Bhasthi translated them.

The 2022 winner, Tomb of Sand, was translated from Hindi.

Deepa Bhasthi translated the book and became the first Indian translator to win the prize.

Banu Mushtaq is the author; Daisy Rockwell translated the 2022 winner.

Mohanlal was named on 20 September 2025 and received the award on 23 September.

Mithun Chakraborty received it for 2022; Rajinikanth for 2019.

C. P. Radhakrishnan was declared elected on 9 September 2025.

Jagdeep Dhankhar, the 14th Vice-President, had resigned in July 2025.

Under Article 66, an electoral college of the members of both Houses of Parliament elects the Vice-President.

State legislators vote in the presidential election, not the vice-presidential one.

Waheeda Rehman received the 53rd Phalke Award, for 2021, at the 69th National Film Awards.

Asha Parekh, the award's 2020 recipient, sat on the committee that chose her.

The badminton doubles pair Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy shared the Khel Ratna 2023.

Mohammed Shami, R. Vaishali and Sheetal Devi received Arjuna Awards that year.

His first film, Mrigayaa (1976), won him the National Award for Best Actor.

Tahader Katha brought a later National Award; Disco Dancer (1982) made him a household name.

His award was for 2022, presented at the 70th National Film Awards.

The 2021 award went to Waheeda Rehman and the 2023 award to Mohanlal.

The four Khel Ratna 2024 awardees were Gukesh D, Harmanpreet Singh, Praveen Kumar and Manu Bhaker.

Neeraj Chopra was not among them.

Murlikant Petkar, a para-swimmer, received the Arjuna Award (Lifetime) 2024, as did the athlete Sucha Singh.

Sajan Prakash, a swimmer, got the regular Arjuna Award that year.

Timur Turlov won the second round 110–85 at the General Assembly in Samarkand.

Arkady Dvorkovich, whom he succeeds, was President from 2018 to 2026.

Turlov is president of the Kazakhstan Chess Federation.

Uzbekistan hosted the vote, at Samarkand, during the 46th Chess Olympiad.

WorldSkills Shanghai 2026 ran from 23 to 26 September.

Lyon hosted the 2024 edition, Kazan the 2019 one and Abu Dhabi the 2017 one.

India finished 10th, with 6 silver medals and 20 Medals for Excellence.

6 and 20 are India's medal counts, not its position.

She was Chief Justice of the Gujarat High Court; her parent High Court is Allahabad.

The Chief Justices of Delhi and Telangana, D.K. Upadhyaya and A.K. Singh, were elevated the same day.

He becomes the 29th Chief of the Air Staff, succeeding Air Chief Marshal Amar Preet Singh.

He was the Vice Chief when appointed, and earlier the Chief of Integrated Defence Staff.

Francis Halzen won for IceCube, a cubic kilometre of ice fitted with light sensors, and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos from space.

Super-Kamiokande is a neutrino detector in Japan; LIGO detects gravitational waves.

Deisseroth, Hegemann and Nagel won for light-gated ion channels, the basis of optogenetics, which controls nerve cells with light.

CRISPR won the Chemistry prize in 2020 and mRNA vaccines the Medicine prize in 2023.

They discovered non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis, which bear on why life uses one mirror-image form of molecules.

Metal-organic frameworks won in 2025, protein structure prediction in 2024 and quantum dots in 2023.

Navi Pillay, born in Durban to a family of Indian Tamil origin, won the 2026 Peace Prize.

Like Mary Robinson, Louise Arbour and Michelle Bachelet, she served as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The Swedish Academy named the Canadian author Anne Carson on 8 October 2026.

Her work was cited for its playful dialogue with the classical tradition.