New Delhi: As the Padma awards were announced on Sunday, January 25, officials said the winners hail from every part of the country, with 10 districts of awardees featuring for the first time since Independence.
The government has chosen 131 Padma awardees from over 39,000 nominations received by it, which were evaluated through an exhaustive, rigorous and scientific process of multiple rounds of scrutiny, and extensive consultations, they said.
The awards for 2026 were chosen in such a way that 84 districts were represented across 30 states and UTs – including 10 districts recognized with a Padma award for the first time since Independence which include Mandya (Karnataka), Betul (Madhya Pradesh), Parbhani (Maharashtra), Bageshwar (Uttarakhand), Ranga Reddy (Telangana), Dakshin Dinajpur (West Bengal), Nuapada (Odisha), Dantewada (Chhattisgarh), Eluru (Andhra Pradesh), and Deeg (Rajasthan).
“Padma awards go beyond just the big cities, into the heartland of India – to Alappuzha, Bhojpur, Cachar, Darjeeling, Goalpara, Imphal, Junagadh, Krishna, Mokokchung, Nuapada, Purba Bardhaman, Sri Ganganagar, and so on,” an official in the know of development said.
The inclusion of Communist stalwart V S Achuthanandan (Padma Vibhushan) and Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) founder Shibu Soren (Padma Bhushan) in the prestigious civilian honours shows “Modi government continues its bipartisan approach in recognising leadership across party lines” with leaders from over 18 political parties and 22 states awarded through its 12-year tenure, the officials said.
“‘Ashtalakshmi’ states have received unprecedented recognition as in the past 12 years, the eight Northeastern states have got over 40 per cent of all Padma awards,” the official said.
Achievers and contributors are from all segments of society, including Dalit and the deprived – truly embodying the principle of ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas’, he said.
“Continuing with the principle of celebrating ordinary Indians making extraordinary contributions, this year’s Padma awards recognise a wide spectrum of unsung heroes from the length and breadth of India,” the official, who did not wish to be named, said.
The awards also recognised 19 inspirational women, ranging from Mangala Kapoor, an acid attack victim who went on to become a music scholar teaching at Banaras Hindu University to Armida Fernandez, a neonatologist who served for nearly half a century in government hospitals, setting up Asia’s first human milk bank.
The awardees also included Shubha Venkatesh Iyengar, an aerospace scientist developing weather monitoring systems deployed across the nation for better visibility in fog and Russian Indologist Liudmila Viktorovna Khokhlova.
Among the Padma Shri awardees are Satyanarayanan Nuwal, one of India’s foremost homegrown defence manufacturers, Ashok Khade who fought poverty as a son of a Dalit cobbler and went on to establishing a cutting-edge offshore fabrication company contributing to strategic national infrastructure, and P L Gautam who rose from a modest agrarian family in Bilaspur to becoming one of India’s foremost Plant Geneticists.
