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. The number of annual awards is usually restricted to a maximum of three in a particular year. However, in 2024, it was awarded to five people.
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. 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’.
In 2024, five people were awarded the Bharat Ratna, four of them posthumously. They are legendary socialist Karpoori Thakur, former Prime Ministers Chaudhury Charan Singh and P.V. Narasimha Rao, eminent agro-scientist M.S. Swaminathan and former Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani
A list of Bharat Ratna recipients:
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. Ramachandran (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) JRD Tata (1992)
29) Satyajit Ray (1992)
30) Gulzarilal Nanda (1997)
31) Aruna Asaf Ali (1997)
32) APJ 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)
44) Atal Bihari Vajpayee (2015)
45) Madan Mohan Malviya (2015)
46) Pranab Mukherjee (2019)
47) Bhupen Hazarika (2019)
48) Nanaji Deshmukh (2019)
49) Karpoori Thakur (2024)
50) L.K. Advani (2024)
51) Chaudhury Charan Singh (2024)
52) P.V. Narasimha Rao (2024)
53) M.S. Swaminathan (2024)
