The government has decided to bestow the Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian award in the country, on the late Karpoori Thakur, a former chief minister of Bihar, for his struggle for recognition of backward castes.

On the eve of Republic Day, the government also announced the recipients of the three Padma awards – Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri.

The President approved five Padma Vibhushan awards, 17 Padma Bhushan awards and 110 Padma Shri awards. Nine have been awarded posthumously. Thirty awardees are women and nine are from the category of ‘Foreigners/NRI/PIO/OCI’ and nine posthumous awardees.

PADMA VIBHUSHAN: M Venkaiah Naidu (former vice-president), Chiranjeevi (actor), Vyjayanthimala Bali (actor), Padma Subrahmanyam (Bharatanatyam dancer) and (posthumously) Bindeshwar Pathak (founder of Sulabh International).

PADMA BHUSHAN: Vijayakant (actor), M Fathima Beevi (the first female judge to be appointed to the Supreme Court of India), Satyabrata Mookherjee (former president of Bharatiya Janata Party in Bengal), Togdan Rinpoche (spiritual leader of the Drikung Kagyu Tradition in Ladakh) (all four posthumously), Young Liu (chairman of Taiwan’s Foxconn Group), Mithun Chakraborty (actor), Usha Uthup (singer), O Rajagopal (BJP leader from Kerala), Tejas Madhusudan Patel (cardiologist from Gujarat), Ram Naik (veteran BJP leader and former Uttar Pradesh governor), Hormusji N Cama (publisher of the leading the Gujarati newspaper Bombay Samachar), Sita Ram Jindal (industrialist), Dattatray Ambadas Mayaloo (Marathi film director), Pyarelal Sharma (Hindi music director of Laxmikant-Pyarelal duo), Kundan Vyas (journalist) and two others.

PADMA SHRI: Dukhu Majhi (tribal environmentalist from Purulia district of Bengal), K Chellamal (organic farmer from South Andaman Island), Sanghthankima (runs the largest orphanage in Aizawl, Mizoram), Rohan Bopanna (tennis player), Joshna Chinappa (squash player), Harbinder Singh (hockey player), Uday Deshpande (Mallakhamb practitioner), Purima Mahtao (archer), Gaurav Khanna (para badminton coach), Satendra Singh Lohia (para swimmer) and 100 others.