Of the 128 Padma awardees this year, 13 have been conferred the second highest civilian honour of Padma Vibhushan while 31 have got the Padma Bhushan and 84, the Padma Shri.
A surprise inclusion among the Padma Shris is Subra Suresh, who was recently nominated to the (United States) National Science Foundation by President Barack Obama.
This year's Padma Vibhushan recipients include the former Attorney-General and jurist, K. Parasaran, chairperson of the 13th Finance Commission Vijay Kelkar and Malayalam writer O.N.V. Kurup.
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Prominent among the Padma Bhushan recipients are the former Foreign Secretary, Shyam Saran, the former civil servants, M.N. Buch and Surinder Singh, Managing Director of ICICI Bank Chanda Kochar, the Birla Group's Rajshree Birla, Infosys executive Kris Gopalakrishnan, Hindi film veterans Shashi Kapoor and Waheeda Rahman, Kathakali exponent Madavur Vasudevan Nair, playback singer S.P. Balasubrahmanyam and theatre personality Satyadev Dubey.
The Padma Shri awardees include arthouse film-maker Girish Kasravalli, yesteryear rock star Usha Uthup, popular Hindu film actors Tabu, Kajol and Irrfan Khan, besides sportspersons Sushil Kumar (wrestling) and Gagan Narang (shooting). Also on the Padma Shri list are educationist Krishna Kumar, feminist-publishers Urvashi Butalia and Ritu Menon, gene scientist and campaigner Suman Sahai, puppetry artist Dadi Dorab Pudumjee and Dr. Indira Hinduja, pioneer of the GIFT (test-tube) technique, which resulted in the birth of India's first test-tube baby in 1978.
Last year, the Padma awards were dogged by controversy over the inclusion of NRI hotelier Sant Singh Chatwal. RTI applications filed during the year revealed repeated violations of norms set by Abdul Kalam and K.R. Narayanan when they served as President and Vice-President. Undoubtedly learning from the past, the government this year appears to have gone over the list with a toothcomb, avoiding dubious names by and large. However, once again this year, the government exceeded its own ceiling of 120 Padma recipients.
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There were also some obvious exclusions. Many of the names located by the official Padma Search Committee did not make the cut. Among the excluded: writers Rohinton Mistry and Upamanyu Chatterjee and music sensation T.M. Krishna. RTI activist Subhash Chandra Agrawal, who had nominated the former Central Information Commissioner, Wajahat Habibullah, twice in succession complained that Mr. Habibullah's name was not accommodated even in the long list of 1333 names from which the Padma Awards Committee made its final selection.
The President has approved 128 awards including one duo case (counted as one) and 12 in the category of Foreigners/NRIs/PIOs/Posthumous.