Nandamuri Balakrishna, AIG Hospitals chairman D Nageshwar Reddy among Padma awardees

Altogether, 139 distinguished persons were named for the country's civilian awards -- Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri -- on the eve of the 76th Republic Day on January 25

New Delhi: Former chief of Suzuki Motor late Osamu Suzuki, renowned singer late Pankaj Udhas, and former Bihar deputy chief minister late Sushil Kumar Modi were among the 71 prominent personalities conferred with Padma awards by President Droupadi Murmu on Monday.

Altogether, 139 distinguished persons were named for the country’s civilian awards — Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri — on the eve of the 76th Republic Day on January 25.

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While 71 of them were given the awards at Rashtrapati Bhavan’s majestic Durbar Hall on Monday in the presence of Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, among others, the remaining will be conferred with the decorations at a separate function to be held soon.

Veteran actor Shekhar Kapur, Chairman of Asian Institute of Gastroenterology and AIG Hospitals D Nageshwar Reddy, violinist Lakshminarayana Subramaniam and Telugu Superstar Nandamuri Balakrishna, also known as Balayya, were the other prominent persons who were conferred with the Padma awards by the president.

Among the awardees, four received Padma Vibhushan — Suzuki (Posthumous), Subramaniam, Reddy and Malayalam author and film director M T Vasudevan Nair (Posthumous).

A total of 10 distinguished personalities were conferred with Padma Bhushan. They include Udhas (Posthumous), Sushil Kumar Modi (Posthumous), Balakrishna, Kapur, former hockey player P R Sreejesh, Tamil actor S Ajith Kumar, chairperson of Zydus Lifesciences, Pankaj Patel, and Vinod Dham, an Indian-American engineer, who is widely known as the ‘Father of the Pentium’.