Bharat Ratna Award

 Bharat Ratna Award

The order was established by Rajendra Prasad, President of India, on 2 January 1954. The original statutes of January 1954 did not make allowance for posthumous awards (and this perhaps explains why the decoration was never awarded to Mahatma Gandhi), though this provision was added in the January 1955 statute. Subsequently, there have been twelve posthumous awards, including the award to Subhash Chandra Bose in 1992, which was later withdrawn due to a legal technicality, the only case of an award being withdrawn. The award was briefly suspended from 13 July 1977 to 26 January 1980. The Bharta Ratna Citation, the certificate conferred to Late M. G. Ramachandran

While there was no formal provision that recipients of the Bharat Ratna should be Indian citizens, this seems to have been the general assumption. There has been one award to a naturalized Indian citizen, Mother Teresa (1980), and two to non-Indians, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1987) and Nelson Mandela (1990). The awarding of this honor though, has frequently been the subject of litigation questioning the constitutional basis of such

Complete list of awardees 

Name	Awarded	Discriptions	state or country of origin
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan	1954	Second President, First Vice President, Philosopher.	Tamil Nadu
C. Rajagopalachari	1954	Last Governor-General, independence activist.	Tamil Nadu
C. V. Raman	1954	Nobel-prize winning Physicist	Tamil Nadu
Bhagwan Das	1955	Literature, independence activist	Uttar Pradesh
Mokshagundam Visvesvarayya	1955	Civil Engineer, Dam Architect, Diwan of Princely state of Mysore	Karnataka
Jawaharlal Nehru	1955	First Prime Minister, independence activist, Author.	Uttar Pradesh
Govind Ballabh Pant	1957	independence activist, Home Minister	Uttar Pradesh (now Uttarakhand)
Dhondo Keshav Karve	1958	Educationist, Social Reformer, Awarded in his birth centenary year.	Maharashtra
Bidhan Chandra Roy	1961	Physician, Politician, Former Chief Minister of West Bengal	West Bengal
Purushottam Das Tandon	1961	independence activist, Educationist	Uttar Pradesh
Rajendra Prasad	1962	First President, independence activist, Jurist	Bihar
Zakir Hussain	1963	Former President, Scholar.	Andhra Pradesh
Pandurang Vaman Kane	1963	Indologist and Sanskrit scholar	Maharashtra
Lal Bahadur Shastri	1966	Posthumous, Second Prime Minister, independence activist	Uttar Pradesh
Indira Gandhi	1971	Former Prime Minister	Uttar Pradesh
V. V. Giri	1975	Former President, Trade Unionist.	Odisha
K. Kamaraj	1976	Posthumous, independence activist, Chief Minister-Tamil Nadu.	Tamil Nadu
Mother Teresa	1980	Nobel Laureate (Peace, 1979).	West Bengal
Vinoba Bhave	1983	Posthumous, Social Reformer, independence activist.	Maharashtra
M. G. Ramachandran	1988	Posthumous, Chief Minister-Tamil Nadu, Actor.	Tamil Nadu
B. R. Ambedkar	1990	Posthumous, Architect-Indian Constitution,Social Reformer, Economist and Scholar	Maharashtra
Rajiv Gandhi	1991	Posthumous, Former Prime Minister	New Delhi
Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel	1991	Posthumous, independence activist, First Home Minister of India.	Gujarat
Morarji Desai	1991	Former Prime Minister, independence activist.	Gujarat
Abul Kalam Azad	1992	Posthumous, independence activist, First Education Minister of India	West Bengal
J. R. D. Tata	1992	Film director	West Bengal
A. P. J. Abdul Kalam	1992	Former President, scientist.	Tamil Nadu
Gulzarilal Nanda	1997	independence activist, former Prime Minister.	Punjab
Aruna Asaf Ali	1997	Posthumous, independence activist.	West Bengal
M. S. Subbulakshmi	1998	Carnatic music vocalist.	Tamil Nadu
Chidambaram Subramaniam	1998	independence activist, Minister of Agriculture.	Tamil Nadu
Jayaprakash Narayan	1999	Posthumous, independence activist, Social Reformer.	Bihar
Ravi Shankar	1999	Sitar player	West Bengal
Amartya Sen	1999	Nobel-prize winning Economist	West Bengal
Gopinath Bordoloi	1999	Posthumous, independence activist, Chief Minister	Assam
Lata Mangeshkar	2001	Singer	Maharashtra
Bhimsen Joshi	2008	Hindustani Classical vocalist	Karnataka