Bharat Ratna
The Bharat Ratna Hindi pronunciation: ; Jewel of India is a highest civilian award of the Republic of India. Instituted on 2 January 1954, the award is conferred in recognition of "exceptional service/performance of the highest order", without distinction of race, occupation, position, or sex. The award was originally limited to achievements in the arts, literature, science, together with public services, but the government expanded the criteria to add "any field of human endeavour" in December 2011. The recommendations for the Bharat Ratna are featured by the Prime Minister to the President, with a maximum of three nominees being awarded per year. The recipients receive a Sanad security degree signed by the President in addition to a peepal leaf-shaped medallion. There is no monetary grant associated with the award. Bharat Ratna recipients classification seventh in the Indian formation of precedence.
The first recipients of the Bharat Ratna were: the last Governor-General of the Dominion of India and the former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu – C. Rajagopalachari,President and the number one Vice President of India – Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Nobel Prize Laureate and Physicist C. V. Raman; who were honoured in 1954. Since then, the award has been bestowed upon 48 individuals, including 14 who were awarded posthumously. The original statutes did not afford for posthumous awards but were amended in January 1955 to allow them. Former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri became the first individual to be honoured posthumously. In 2014, cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, then aged 40, became the youngest recipient; while social reformer Dhondo Keshav Karve was awarded on his 100th birthday. The first singer to be awarded was M. S. Subbulakshmi and the first actor to be awarded was M. G. Ramachandran. Though ordinarily conferred on India-born citizens, the Bharat Ratna has been awarded to one naturalized citizen – Mother Teresa, and to two non-Indians: Abdul Ghaffar Khan born in British India and later citizen of Pakistan and Nelson Mandela, born in and citizen of South Africa. On 25 January 2019, the government announced the award to social activist Nanaji Deshmukh posthumously, singer-music director Bhupen Hazarika posthumously and to the former President of India, Pranab Mukherjee.
The Bharat Ratna, along with other personal civil honours, was briefly suspended from July 1977 to January 1980, during the change in the national government; and for atime from August 1992 to December 1995, when several public-interest litigations challenged the constitutional validity of the awards. In 1992, the government's decision to confer the award posthumously on Subhas Chandra Bose was opposed by those who had refused to accept the fact of his death, including some members of his extended family. coming after or as a result of. a 1997 Supreme Court decision, the press communiqué announcing Bose's award was cancelled; it is for the only time when the award was announced but non conferred.
The bestowals of the posthumous awards of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel 1991 and Madan Mohan Malaviya 2015 drew criticism, because they died previously the award was instituted.