Bharat Ratna opens to all achievers, thanks to Sachin Tendulkar

To honour cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar with the Bharat Ratna, the government had to open India’s highest civilian honour for 'exceptional service' to all fields from four, a reply under the Right To Information (RTI) Act has revealed.

Updated on: Nov 19, 2013, 08:46:21 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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To honour cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar with the Bharat Ratna, the government had to open India’s highest civilian honour for “exceptional service” to all fields from four, a reply under the Right To Information (RTI) Act has revealed.

Earlier, the honour was restricted to art, literature, science and public service.

A home ministry official’s note from 2011 makes it clear the inclusion of sports “was to honour Sachin Tendulkar”.

In the note, the official also raises questions about ignoring other sports legends such as Major Dhyan Chand (hockey), Jaspal Rana (shooting), Viswanathan Anand (chess) and PT Usha (athletics).

Ajay Maken, the then sports minister, had written to the home ministry for inclusion of sports as a field for the Bharat Ratna award.

The home ministry did not agree with its official’s view and fought shy of taking a decision because as no amendment was ever made in the rules for Bharat Ratna since its inception in 1954.

A decision was taken to refer the matter to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).

The PMO too was willing to take a call and asked the home ministry to send its view on including sports as one of the fields for the award.

The deliberations started again in the ministry, which in a bid to avoid controversy over Tendulkar, recommended the award should be open to all fields.

The PMO agreed and said, “The decoration shall be awarded in recognition of exceptional service/performance of the highest order in any field of human endeavour.”

The President’s Secretariat notified the change in 2011, paving the way for the honour to be bestowed upon Tendulkar.

The same year, the government had received references for conferring the honour on several achievers including former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, former president APJ Abdul Kalam, Major Dhyan Chand and agriculture scientist MS Swaminathan.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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