Complete List of Bharat Ratna awardees

Friends.. As you know only the last day (24 Dec 2014) bharat has got two more ratnas with the selection of Atal Bihari Vajpayee & Madan Mohan Malviya for the prestigious award. So now it’s time to rewind all the awardees of Bharat Ratna since its inception. Before going to the list, let's have a deep look into this award. 

Know about Bharat Ratna?

>> Bharat Ratna, the country’s highest civilian award instituted on 2 January 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 restricted to a maximum of three in a particular year.

>> The award was originally limited to achievements in the arts, literature, science and public services but the government expanded the criteria to include "any field of human endeavour" in December 2011.

>> Recipients receive a Sanad (certificate) signed by the President and a peepal-leaf–shaped medallion; there is no monetary grant associated with the award. Bharat Ratna recipients rank seventh in the Indian order of precedence, but are constitutionally prohibited from using the award name as a title.

>> 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’.

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Full 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)