BJP patriarch L.K. Advani, Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and actors Amitabh Bachchan and Dilip Kumar are among the nine Padma Vibhushan awardees, the second highest civilian award of the country.
Senior advocate K.K. Venugopal, nuclear scientist M.R. Srinivasan, philanthropist Veerendra Heggade and Sanskrit scholar Rambhadracharya and Karim Al Hussiani Aga Khan are the other awardees of the Padma Vibhushan.
Among the 20 names to be awarded the Padma Bhushan are senior advocate Harish Salve, journalists Swapan Dasgupta, Rajat Sharma, former Chief Election Commissioner N. Gopalaswami, constitutional expert Subhash Kashyap and Carnatic vocalist Sudha Raghunathan.
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Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his wife Melinda Gates, and Fields Medal winner Manjul Bhargava have also been named for the Padma Bhushan.
Economist Bibek Debroy, now a member of the Niti Ayog, and lyricist Prasoon Joshi, who worked on the advertisement campaign for the BJP’s Lok Sabha campaign, are among the 75 people to be conferred with the Padma Shri award. IT honcho Mohandas Pai, badminton player P.V. Sindhu, woman cricketer Mithali Raj, filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali and Arunima Sinha, the first woman amputee to climb the Mount Everest, are the other prominent names on the list.