BJP stalwarts Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj and socialist icon George Fernandes, all of whom passed away last year, have been honoured with the Padma Vibhushan, the country’s second highest civilian honour after Bharat Ratna, in recognition of their services to public life and as parliamentarians. Another BJP luminary Manohar Parrikar, who had held the defence portfolio and was chief minister of Goa till he passed away in March 2019, has been awarded the Padma Bhushan posthumously.
The Padma Vibhushan list also includes the late Udupi Pejavara Math leader and votary of Ram Mandir Shri Vishveshateertha Swamiji, who worked for abolition of untouchability and had once thrown open the doors of his mutt for Muslims to host iftaar, Olympian boxer and Rajya Sabha MP Mary Kom and former Indian-origin PM of Mauritius Anerood Jugnauth.
Padma list has 141 awards
The Padma Awards list this year has 141 awards, including 7 Padma Vibhushan, 16 Padma Bhushan and 118 Padma Shri.
There are 34 women among the awardees and 18 from the foreigners, NRI, PIO and OIC categories. As many as 12 awards were given posthumously. From Bollywood, actress Kangana Ranaut and producers Karan Johar and Ekta Kapoor, apart from singers Adnan Sami and Suresh Wadkar have received the Padma Shri honour. British MPs Bob Blackman and Berry Gardiner were among the Padma Shri award winners.
Among the interesting picks are PDP leader Muzaffar Hussain Baig, who has been at cross purposes with party leader Mehbooba Mufti and is seen as political factor in Jammu and Kashmir, and Congress veteran S C Jamir. Both have been honoured with Padma Bhushan.
The honours for Jaitley and Swaraj are in keeping with the central role they played in BJP and Modi government and their long record as parliamentarians and eminent persons in public life. Swaraj was a charismatic campaigner who made an early mark in electoral politics. Jaitley strode the world of law as a top-notch lawyer and was a well-regarded parliamentarian in opposition and government. The recognition to Fernandes is significant as he, along with Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, broke ranks with socialist and Mandal parties to become BJP allies.
Unsung heroes’ honoured
At least five on the list of ‘unsung’ 21 Padma Shri awardees happen to be Muslims. The Modi government has gone beyond the traditional catchment area for awarding civilian decorations. Among the commoners honoured this year is late Abdul Jabbar, a 1983 Bhopal gas leak victim who ran an advocacy group for other victims and survivors. He provided vocational training to 2,300 widows of gas leak victims and fought for medical rehabilitation of victims in courts.
Kerala-born Sathyanarayan Mundayoor or ‘Uncle Moosa’, also awarded Padma Shri for social work, has been honoured for promoting education and reading culture in Arunachal Pradesh by starting a home library movement. Tribal woman from Karnataka, Tulasi Gowda, with no formal education, has been awarded Padma Shri on account of her vast knowledge of various species of plants and herbs.
The services of Javed Ahmad Tak, a ‘divyang’ or physically challenged person from Anantnag (J&K), who has been working with specially-abled children for 2 decades, have also been recognised with a Padma Shri. Mohammad ‘Chacha’ Sharif from Uttar Pradesh, who has performed last rites of over 25,000 unclaimed bodies in and around Faizabad for past 25 years, has been honoured for being “an apostle of communal harmony”.
Another ‘divyang’ on the list includes S Ramakrishnan from Tamil Nadu, who has rehabilitated over 14,000 speciallya-bled people over four decades across 800 villages.
‘Langar Baba’ Jagdish Lal Ahuja, a Padma Shri winner, has been serving food daily to hundreds of poor patients and attendants outside PGIMER hospital in Punjab. He sold off his properties to fuel his mission and was undeterred even by his stomach cancer.
Father-daughter awardee duo from Odisha - Radha Mohan and Sabarmatee - run a resource centre where they exchange seeds and learn organic farming. Doctor Arundoday Mondal who travels 6 hours everyday to treat patients in remote Sundarban villages in West Bengal, has been recognised for his selfless service after having treated more than 4,000 people. Another doctor, oncologist Ravi Kannan who has treated over 70,000 cancer patients free of cost in Barak valley of Assam, has been awarded Padma Shri.
Harekala Hajabba who educates poor children in his Dakshin Kannada village for 20 years through meagre earnings from selling oranges, has also been given Padma Shri. He had set up a Hajabba school initially at a mosque but later converted into into a zila panchayat higher primary school with the help of people and government. He now plans to upgrade it to a pre-university college .
Popatrao Pawar, a sarpanch of Hiware Bazaar village in Maharashtra, transformed it from an impoverished, drought-prone village to a role model of village development. The village now has no BPL families, no alcohol consumption and is open defecation-free.
Usha Chaumar, a Dalit woman from Rajasthan, who was a manual scavenger since seven years of age but was rescued by Nai Disha NGO of Sulabh International and now heads Sulabh International Social Service Organisation and leads the fight against manual scavenging, is also on the Padma Shri list.
