Former President Pranab Mukherjee along with social activist late Nanaji Deshmukh and playback singer late Dr Bhupen Hazrika were conferred with India’s highest civilian award Bharat Ratna by the Narendra Modi government. The announcement was made on the eve of the 70th Republic Day. Mukherjee is the only living legend from among the three great names who have been conferred with the country's highest civilian honour.

The Bharat Ratna is the highest civilian award of the Republic of India instituted in 1954. On 2 January 1954, the office of the secretary to the President issued a press release announcing the creation of two civilian awards—Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian award, and the three-tier Padma Vibhushan classified into Class I, Class II, and Class III. On 15 January 1955, the Padma Vibhushan was reclassified into three different awards; the Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan and the Padma Shri.

The award is conferred in recognition of the exceptional performance of the highest order in various fields. The recommendations for the Bharat Ratna are made by the Prime Minister to the President, with a maximum of three nominees being awarded per year. The first recipients of the Bharat Ratna were politician C. Rajagopalachari, philosopher Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, and scientist C. V. Raman. Since then, the award has been bestowed upon 48 individuals, including 14 who were awarded posthumously. In 2014, Master Blaster Sachin Tendulkar, then aged 40, became the youngest recipient.

Here is the list of recipients of Bharat Ratna Awards since 1954:

C. Rajagopalachari

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

V. Raman

Bhagwan Das

Visvesvaraya

Jawaharlal Nehru

Govind Ballabh Pant

Dhondo Keshav Karve

Bidhan Chandra Roy

Purushottam Das Tandon

Rajendra Prasad

Zakir Husain

Pandurang Vaman Kane

Lal Bahadur Shastri

Indira Gandhi

V. V. Giri

K. Kamaraj

Mother Teresa

Vinoba Bhave

Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan

G. Ramachandran

Dr. B. R. Ambedkar

Nelson Mandela

Rajiv Gandhi

Vallabhbhai Patel

Morarji Desai

Abul Kalam Azad

J. R. D. Tata

Satyajit Ray

Gulzarilal Nanda

Aruna Asaf Ali

A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

M. S. Subbulakshmi

Chidambaram Subramaniam

Jayaprakash Narayan

Amartya Sen

Gopinath Bordoloi

Ravi Shankar

Lata Mangeshkar

Bismillah Khan

Bhimsen Joshi

C. N. R. Rao

Sachin Tendulkar 

Madan Mohan Malaviya

Atal Bihari Vajpayee

Pranab Mukherjee

Nanaji Deshmukh

Dr Bhupen Hazarika

The central government today announced names of the Padma awardees 2019 on the eve of the 70th Republic Day. President Ram Nath Kovind will confer Padma Shri to 94 people including veteran actor Kader Khan (posthumously), actor Manoj Bajpayee, footballer Sunil Chhetri, choreographer/director Prabhu Deva, former cricketer Gautam Gambhir, singer Shankar Mahadevan and freestyle wrestler Bajrang Punia.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jan 26, 2019 12:24 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).