Bharat Ratna: History of highest civilian award and who all received it so far

New Delhi, Dec 24: Bharat Ratna, the country's highest civilian award instituted in 1954, is given in recognition of exceptional service, performance of the highest order in any field of human endeavour.

Any person without distinction of race, occupation, position or sex is eligible for this award. The recommendations for Bharat Ratna are made by the Prime Minister to the President. No formal recommendations for this are necessary.

The number of annual awards is restricted to a maximum of three in a particular year. On conferment of the award, the recipient receives a Sanad (certificate) signed by the President and a medallion. The award does not carry any monetary grant.

In terms of Article 18 (1) of the Constitution, the award cannot be used as a prefix or suffix to the recipient's name. However, should an award winner consider it necessary, he or she may use the following expression in their biodata or letterhead or visiting card etc. to indicate that he or she is a recipient of the award: 'Awarded Bharat Ratna by the President' or 'Recipient of Bharat Ratna Award'.

Educationist Madan Mohan Malviya and former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee are the 44th and 45th distinguished personalities who have been conferred with country's highest civilian award Bharat Ratna. Early this year, Sachin Tendulkar and C N R Rao were given Bharat Ratna.

The others who were conferred with Bharat Ratna are:

1) C Rajagopalachari 1954

2) Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan 1954

3) C V Raman 1954

4) Bhagwan Das 1955

5) Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya 1955

6) Jawaharlal Nehru 1955

7) Govind Ballabh Pant 1957

8) Dhondo Keshav Karve 1958

9) Bidhan Chandra Roy 1961

10)Purushottam Das Tandon 1961

11)Rajendra Prasad 1962

12)Zakir Hussain 1963

13)Pandurang Vaman Kane 1963

14)Lal Bahadur Shastri 1966

15)Indira Gandhi 1971

16)V V Giri 1975

17)K Kamaraj 1976

18)Mother Teresa 1980

19)Acharya Vinoba Bhave 1983

20)Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan 1987

21)M G Ramachandra 1988

22)B R Ambedkar 1990

23)Nelson Mandela 1990

24)Rajiv Gandhi 1991

25)Vallabhbhai Patel 1991

26)Morarji Desai 1991

27)Maulana Abul Kalam Azad 1992

28)J R D Tata 1992

29)Satyajit Ray 1992

30)Gulzarilal Nanda 1997

31)Aruna Asaf Ali 1997

32)A P J Abdul Kalam 1997

33)M S Subbulakshmi 1998

34)Chidambaram Subramaniam 1998

35)Jayaprakash Narayan 1999

36)Amartya Sen 1999

37)Gopinath Bordoloi 1999

38)Pandit Ravi Shankar 1999

39)Lata Mangeshkar 2001

40)Ustad Bismillah Khan 2001

41)Bhimsen Joshi 2009

42)C N R Rao 2014

43)Sachin Tendulkar 2014

PTI