Former Bengal CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee rejects Padma Bhushan award

New Delhi, Jan 25: Just hours after it was announced that former West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee was being conferred with Padma Bhushan by the Narendra Modi's BJP government, the Communist leader has refused to accept the honour.

"I don't know anything about the Padma Bhushan award, nobody told me about it. If I have been awarded the Padma Bhushan, I would have rejected it," Hindustan Times quotes him as saying in a statement.

The government sources have told news agency ANI that that the family was informed in the morning by a very senior Central official of Centre's decision to bestow him with the honour. His wife had spoken to the official.

"No information was given to the Central government about the decision of the family to refuse the award. The announcement of the awards only happened later in the evening. This was possibly a political afterthought," the government sources told ANI.

He was one among the 17 members to be conferred with Padma Bhushan. The other members who are bagged this civilian award are below:

Ghulam Nabi Azad - Public Affairs
Victor Banerjee - Art
Gurmeet Bawa (Posthumous) - Art
Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee - Public Affairs
Natarajan Chandrasekaran - Trade and Industry
Krishna Ella and Smt. Suchitra Ella* (Duo) - Trade and Industry
Madhur Jaffery Others-Culinary
Devendra Jhajharia - Sports
Rashid Khan - Art
Rajiv Mehrishi - Civil Service
Satya Narayana Nadella - Trade and Industry
Sundararajan Pichai - Trade and Industry
Cyrus Poonawalla - Trade and Industry
Sanjaya Rajaram (Posthumous) - Science and Engineering
Pratibha Ray - Literature and Education
Swami Sachidanand - Literature and Education
Vashishth Tripathi - Literature and Education