In Graphics | All about India’s Bharat Ratna and its five recipients in 2024

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday announced that former prime ministers PV Narasimha Rao and Charan Singh as well as Green Revolution pioneer MS Swaminathan will be conferred the Bharat Ratna. The highest civilian award in the country is awarded in recognition of exceptional service or performance of the highest order in any field of human endeavour. It is treated on a different footing from Padma awards. The latest Bharat Ratnas have taken the number of recipients of the prestigious award to 53. Usually, three Bharat Ratna awards are given in a year, however, this year the government has named five people for Bharat Ratna, including veteran BJP leader LK Advani and former Bihar chief minister Karpoori Thakur. Till now, the maximum number of Bharat Ratna were awarded in 1999, when four recipients were given the coveted award. Four of the five awards this year are posthumous. Advani, 96, is the only one alive. The last Bharat Ratna award was conferred upon Pranab Mukherjee in 2019 and was posthumously awarded to Bhupendra Kumar Hazarika and Nanaji Deshmukh. The award was not given to anyone between 2020 and 2023. In the first year, the coveted award was conferred upon C Rajagopalachari, Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan and Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman. Those conferred with this award in the past include Jawaharlal Nehru, Rajendra Prasad, Zakir Hussain, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Abul Kalam Azad, Indira Gandhi, K Kamraj, Mother Teresa, Vinoba Bhave, M G Ramachandran, B R Ambedkar, Nelson Mandela, Rajiv Gandhi, Vallabhbhai Patel, Morarji Desai, Satyajit Ray, APJ Abdul Kalam, Jayaprakash Narayan, Amartya Sen, Sachin Tendulkar, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Madan Mohan Malaviya. The other recipients are Bhagwan Das, M Visvesvaraya, Govind Ballabh Pant, Dhondo Keshav Karve, Bidhan Chandra Roy, Purshottam Das Tandon, Pandurang Vaman Kane, Varahgiri Venkata Giri, Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan, Jahangir Ratanji Dadabhai Tata, Gulzarilal Nanda, Bismillah Khan, M Subbulakshmi, Gopinath Bordoloi, Pandit Ravi Shankar, C N R Rao, Bhimsen Gururaj Joshi, Lata Mangeshkar, Chidambaram Subramaniam and Aruna Asaf Ali. Here’s all we know about the highest civilian award in the country.

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