Sridevi, Sharmila Tagore, Rahul Dravid receive Padma Awards

President Pranab Mukherji conferred the first batch of Padma Awards on Friday. Veteran actors Sridevi and Sharmila Tagore received their Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan Awards respectively.

Cricketer Rahul Dravid, actresses Sharmila Tagore and Sridevi, and DRDO chief V K Saraswat were among the 54 people honoured with Padma awards today by President Pranab Mukherjee. Sculptor Raghunath Mohapatra and researcher Yash Pal received Padma Vibhushan, India's second-highest civilian award.

Saraswat, Tagore, film producer D Ramanaidu and Dravid were presented the third highest Padma Bhushan, while Sridevi got Padma Shri from the President at a ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhawan's Darbar Hall. The ten recipients of Padma Bhushan included Hemendra Singh Panwar, Shivajirao Girdhar Patil, Kanak Yatindra Rele, Prof Ashoke Sen, Prof Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Ramamurthy Thyagarajan.

Theatre personality B Jayashree, boxer Ngangom Dingko Singh of Indian Navy, photographer Pablo Bartholomew and Subedar Major Bajrang Lal Takhar also received Padma Shri. S Lakshminarayana 'Bapu', Vandana Luthra, S K M Maeilanandhan, Kailash Chandra Meher, Neelima Chandrashekhar Mishra, P Madhavan Nair, Sankar Kumar Pal, Brahmdeo Ram Pandit, Rajshree Pathy, Deepak Bhaskar Phatak, Mudundi Ramakrishna Raju, C Venkata S Ram, R Nageshwar Rao, Surender Sharma, Jaymala Jayram Shiledar, Rama Kant Shukla, Ajay Kumar Sood, Pt Suresh Talwalkar, Rajendar Kumar Tiku and Akhtarul Wasey also received Padma Shri.

The 42 people honoured with Padma Shri included Avnita Abbi, Sudarshan Kumar Aggarwal, Mohammad Sharfe Alam, Gajam Anjaiah, Rajendra Achyut Badwe, Memendra Prasad Barooah, G C D Bharti, Ravindra Singh Bisht, Avinash Chander, Taraprasad Das, Trichur Viswanathan Devarajan, Sanjay Govind Dhande, Saroj Chooramani Gopal, Noboru Karashima from Japan, Ram Krishan (posthumous), Salik Lakhnawi (posthumous) and Manju Bharat Ram (posthumous).

This year's list of honours were announced on January 25 and another ceremony is expected later for presentation of the awards to the remaining recipients.