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7 from State among 108 awardees

As many as seven eminent people from Karnataka, including cricketer Rahul Dravid and aerospace scientist from Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advance Scientific Research  in Bangalore Roddam Narasimha, have been honoured with Padma awards under different disciplines.

Dravid, who scored close to 24,000 international runs before announcing his retirement early last year, was chosen for the second highest civilian honour of Padma Bhushan while Narasimha has been honoured with Padma Vibhushan.

Professor and director of National Centre for Biological Sciences Krishnaswamy Vijayraghavan and Ajay K Sood, professor of Physics department of Indian Institute of Science, have been awarded Padma Shri. Theatre personality B Jayashree also has been honoured with Padma Shri.

Aerospace scientist B N Suresh, known for his contribution to Space Capsule Recovery Experiments, has been honoured with Padma Bhushan.

Yesteryear superstar the late Rajesh Khanna has been posthumously honoured with Padma Bhushan. Film personality Sharmila Tagore has been chosen for the Padma Bhushan, and Sridevi for Padma Shri.

This year too, nobody was named for Bharat Ratna. The last awardee was the late Bhimsen Joshi in 2008.

Physicist Yash Pal has been chosen for Padma Vibhushan.

Sculptor Raghunath Mohapatra and painter S Haider Raza have been chosen for Padma Vibhushan.

The 108 Padma awardees also include actors Nana Patekar and Malayalam star Madhu of Chemmeen fame and Olympians Mary Kom, Yogeshwar Dutt and Vijay Kumar.
In all, four personalities were awarded Padma Vibhushan, 24 Padma Bhushan and 80 Padma Shri.

11 foreigners

Of the awardees, 24 are women, 11 belong to the category of foreigners, NRI, PIOs and posthumous.

Satirist Jaspal Bhatti, who died in a road accident last year, filmmaker D Rama Naidu, South Indian playback singer S Janaki, Bharatnatyam dancer Saroja Vaidyanathan, missile scientist A Sivathanu Pillai of BrahMos programme, industrialist Adi Godrej and R Tyagarajan, former bureaucrat M K Bhan were among the 24 Padma Bhushan awardees.