Reforms necessary in awarding National Honours of Bharat Ratna and Padma awards

Controversies have been usual in awards of national honours of Bharat Ratna and Padma awards (Three variants of Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan and Padma Shree) especially in earlier UPA regime when there were many instances of giving disgrace to such important National Honours by awarding these to undeserving persons only for political purposes. There have been many instances when persons with criminal background, having done fraud with public exchequer by tax-evasion and enormous accumulation of large unaccounted wealth through unfair means, defaulting re-payment of bank-loans and such other aspects which must not have considered such names for award of National Honours. Even Supreme Court had to once intervene in selection of awardees of National Honours which once had to be even discontinued. These awards were subsequently re-started when Supreme Court fixed guidelines for selection of awardees.

1. It is improper to grade about 120 Padma awardees in three variants in a country of more than a billion thereby degrading real value of Padmashree in presence of Padmabhushan and Padmavibhushan. Merging the three variants of Padma awards will pave way to include even more persons for these honours. Presently about one-third awardees every year are those who get an upgraded version, having been already honoured with Padma award in previous years. A person should be honoured just once in life-time with Padma award. However Bharat Ratna may be awarded to any person having been already honoured with Padma award.
2. An individual should be restricted to send just one recommendation for Padma Award. However ministries and secretariats may have liberty to send any number of recommendations as considered fit. Constitutional authorities like President, Vice president, Prime Minister and Union Ministers and those in state governments (Governors, Chief Ministers etc) can then recommend any number of persons through their respective secretariats. It was observed that in earlier UPA regime, treasurer of All India Congress Committee ones sent too many recommendations causing unnecessary burden on scrutiny procedure in a please-all-policy or may be for fund-raising for the party.
3. List of Padma aspirants should be short-listed by first seeking clearance from intelligence and tax authorities before presenting it before Awards-Committee so that names of finally cleared personalities may only be floated amongst members of Awards Committee for careful study and consideration. Idea should be to send minimum names before the Awards Committee to give a closer look on nominees in a manner that no additional meetings may be required to substitute persons rejected by tax and/or intelligence authorities.
4. To effectively check irregularities in selection of Padma Awards, members of Awards Committee should be selected by consensus of Prime Minister and Opposition leader with a nominee of the Opposition Leader may also be a member of Awards Committee. Union Cabinet Secretary should be Secretary of the Selection Committee with Chief Vigilance Commissioner being a member of Selection Committee to be chaired by Vice President of India. There should be every effort that Selection Committee may by consensus select names of awardees for being honoured with National Honours.
5. Highest civilian honour of Bharat Ratna should only be given with consensus of Prime Minister and Opposition Leader to avoid misuse for political purposes like was said to have been done in some earlier cases like that of a prominent South India political leader.
6. Foreign nationals should not be honoured with Padma awards or Bharat Ratna. India already has some prestigious global awards. Only resident Indians should be honoured with these civilian honours also because India already has ‘Paravasi Bhartiya Awards’ for NRIs
7. Complete selection-process should be made public on website of Union Home Ministry (MHA) just after the awards are announced on eve of Republic Day, including names of those considered for Padma awards, persons/bodies having recommending them, and dates of receipt of nominations both by the authority concerned and by Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).
8. Recipients of recognised global awards like Noble Prize and those having set World-Records like winning medals in recognised international events and those having done prestige to the nation by getting their names registered in Guinness Book of World Record should be automatic choice for National Honours.

Honours should be rolled back in case of those having been decorating with Bharat Ratna and Padma awards in earlier years but later found involved in controversies. There have been many such cases like Olympic-medallist wrestler (Padma Shree awardee) found accused of being involved in killing of a junior wrestler ultimately arrested by Delhi Police on 23.05.2021 with application of his anticipatory bail earlier rejected by the court, a film-actor involved in controversy of being involved in a criminal case, former CEO of a prominent private-sector bank found guilty in unlawful favour of loan-sanction even ultimately putting her behind the bars. Even now in the year 2026, a popular film-actor was honoured with Padma Vibhushan even though he misused Islam for being Muslim only for one day to have unethical second marriage while his first wife was alive without any divorce. It is also a matter of curiosity that how and why his second wife was invited to receive his posthumous award instead of his first wife!

 All such cases put a big question-mark on method of scrutiny by intelligence agencies to clear names of those selected by Awards committee for Padma awards. Such unfair selection of awardees of National Honours tend to doubt that investigating agencies give green signal for such wrong selections of awardees of National Honours under pressure of those in power. For future, affidavits should be received from awardees nominated for National Honours about their not being involved in controversies. Members of public should also be invited to send views on adverse aspects of nominees of National Honours by making public list of nominees for National Honours to enable members of public file their comments on undesirable nominated ones to be put before high-powered Selection Committee. Intelligence agencies should be given sufficient time to verify nominations cleared by Awards Committee before Awards Committee submitting final recommendations by 30^th November every year.

Ever since BJP (NDA) has come to power, there have been some serious efforts to trace deserving national heroes some of them even coming from poor rural background for award of National Honours irrespective of cast or religion like a Muslim person engaged in cremation of unclaimed bodies that too according to religious faith of the deceased for last so many years having cremated over 25000 bodies till now since he lost his young son about 27 years back. However it was surprising that former Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar was honoured with Padma Bhushan while other departed political leaders of similar status were honoured with Padma Vibhushan. It was even more shocking that a former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh and an opposition leader was also honoured with Padma Vibhushan in present regime in the year 2023 despite 1990 Ayodhya Police Firing, his remarks on rape, and accumulation of disproportionate assets and infamous Lucknow Guest House Incident in the year 1995. It is an unhealthy tradition that Padma awards are somewhat reserved for renowned political leaders only to exhibit honouring politicians cutting across party-lines.

Controversies apart, the then Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri (Congress) approved monthly pension for Veer Savarkar which could not be started under regime of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru as first Prime Minister. Later the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi showered words of praise in honour of Veer Savarkar and further honoured him by issuing a commemorative stamp in his honour in the year 1970. Even Congress-ally Shiv Sena in Maharashtra favoured Bharat Ratna for Veer Savarkar. It is noteworthy that Veer Savarkar resisted fundamentalism in Hinduism when he directed his family not to perform 10^th and 13^th day rituals after his death. He was even cremated through electric cremation rather than traditional wood-fired pyre. It was BJP regime that ignored personalities like Sardar Patel and Chandikadas Amritrao Deshmukh (Nanaji Deshmukh) were posthumously honoured with Bharat Ratna. Better will be to posthumously honour great freedom-fighters including Bhagatsingh, Sukhdev, Rajguru, Ashfaqulla Khan with Bharat Ratna.

Some more prominent personalities having done par-excellence in their respective fields like Devkin Nandan Pandey (News Reader), Mukesh Mathur (Male play-back singer), Jagjit Singh (Ghazal), Ratan Tata (Industry should be considered for posthumously being honoured with Bharat Ratna like Lata Mangeshkar (Female play-back singer), Ustan Bismillah Khan (Shahnai) were honoured with India’s greatest National Honours. It can be only in regime of a transparent government that Pranab Mukherjee of Congress was honoured with Bharat Ratna. Likewise, PV Narsimha Rao ignored by his own party can be posthumously honoured with Bharat Ratna.