Padma awards for five persons from Telangana

These include spiritual leader Chinna Jeeyar Swami and Kamlesh D Patel, popular as Daaji, for the Padma Bhushan. Both of them are being awarded in the Spiritualism category.

Hyderabad: Five persons from the State have been selected for the prestigious Padma awards this year.

These include spiritual leader Chinna Jeeyar Swami and Kamlesh D Patel, popular as Daaji, for the Padma Bhushan. Both of them are being awarded in the Spiritualism category. The Padma Shri, meanwhile, will be awarded to Modadugu Vijay Gupta (Science & Engineering) Pasupuleti Hanumantha Rao (Medicine) and B Ramakrishna Reddy (Literature & Education).

Chinna Jeeyar Swami, formally known as Sri Tridandi Srimannarayana Ramanuja Chinna Jeeyar Swami, is known for his spiritual discourses on Sri Vaishnavism. He subscribes to the Thenkalai tradition of Sri Vaishnavism, and is the designer of the Statue of Equality here.

Kamlesh D Patel, the leader of the Heartfulness Movement, is known for his value-based self-development programmes offered to students and faculty in over 2,500 schools, universities, and colleges. Heartfulness organisations offer free meditation training in 130 countries.

Ramakrishna Reddy, who is being awarded for his contributions in the field of literature and education, is an 80-year-old linguistics professor and is known for his work in preservation of tribal and southern languages like Kuvi, Manda and Kui, building a cultural bridge connecting tribal languages with other languages and also for drafting the Manda-English Dictionary and Kuvi-Oriya-English Dictionary while also co-authoring five books towards this cause.

Vijay Gupta, an Indian biologist and fisheries scientist, earlier served as the Assistant Director General at World Fish, an international fisheries research institute under the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research in Malaysia. He is credited with the explosive increase in aquaculture production known now as the Blue Revolution. He was awarded the World Food Prize in 2005 and in 2015, was selected for the first Sunhak Peace Prize, in recognition of his creating an aquaculture system for the poor, rural populations in Asia, Africa and the Pacific.

Hanumantha Rao, who did his medical education from the Kakatiya Medical College, is known for setting up the Sweekaar Rehabilition Institute for Handicapped in Secunderabad, which later became the Sweekaar Academy of Rehabilitation Sciences. He also established four non-profit organizations, Sweekaar, Upkaar, Aashray and Suraksha for caring the mentally, physically, visually hearing handicapped, drug-addicts, aged, widows and the destitute.