India\u2019s first Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat, who died in a chopper crash last December, late Radheshyam Khemka, former chairman of Gita Press that publishes Hindu religious books, and Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad were among 54 personalities who were conferred Padma awards by President Ram Nath Kovind on Monday.
While Rawat and Khemka were given Padma Vibhushan, the country\u2019s second-highest civilian award, posthumously, Azad, Tata Sons chairman N Chandrasekharan, former CAG Rajiv Mehrishi, founder of Serum Institute of India that made COVID-19 vaccine Covishield Cyrus Poonawalla were among the eight honoured with Padma Bhushan, the country\u2019s third-highest civilian award, at a civil investiture ceremony held at Rashtrapati Bhavan.
This year, no names were announced for \u2018Bharat Ratna\u2019, India\u2019s highest civilian award, which was last awarded in 2019 to former president Pranab Mukherjee, social reformer Nanaji Deshmukh and noted singer Bhupen Hazarika.
The award for Rawat was received by his daughters while a close family member received the award for Khemka.
Many of those who received the Padma awards were \u201cunsung heroes\u201d, including 125-year-old yoga practitioner Swami Sivananda.
Members of the audience clapped as a bare-feet Sivananda, dressed in a simple white kurta and dhoti, knelt before Prime Minister Narendra Modi who promptly got up and bowed, touching the ground as he returned the greeting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
India\u2019s first Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat, who died in a chopper crash last December, late Radheshyam Khemka, former chairman of Gita Press that publishes Hindu religious books, and Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad were among 54 personalities who were conferred Padma awards by President Ram Nath Kovind on Monday.While Rawat and Khemka […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20177,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,22],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-20176","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-latest-news","8":"category-national"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/earlypostdaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/earlypostdaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/earlypostdaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earlypostdaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earlypostdaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20176"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/earlypostdaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20178,"href":"https:\/\/earlypostdaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20176\/revisions\/20178"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earlypostdaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/earlypostdaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earlypostdaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earlypostdaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}