Civilian & National Honours: Bharat Ratna, Padma Awards, Gandhi Peace Prize and Nari Shakti Puraskar (2019–2026)

RPSC's "Major awards, publications and distinguished authors" line covers far more than literary prizes (that side of the topic — Nobel, Booker, Jnanpith, Sahitya Akademi, Vyas Samman, Saraswati Samman and the Meera Puraskar — is covered in a separate chapter). This chapter covers India's civilian and national honours: the Bharat Ratna, the three-tier Padma Awards, the Gandhi Peace Prize, and the Nari Shakti Puraskar — plus two award families RPSC has directly tested that are easy to mix up with these.

Note before going further — four mix-ups worth separating immediately:

1. The Gandhi Peace Prize (Government of India, Ministry of Culture, instituted 1995) is a completely different award from the privately-administered Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development (given by the Indira Gandhi Memorial Trust, a non-governmental body). News aggregators frequently conflate the two — if a name doesn't appear in the Gandhi Peace Prize table below, it likely belongs to the other award.
2. The Nari Shakti Puraskar (Government of India, Ministry of Women & Child Development) is different from Rajasthan's own state-government Devi Ahilyabai Holkar Stree Shakti Puraskar — don't attribute a state award to the central one.
3. The National Awards for the Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities) is a distinct annual scheme from the Padma Awards, even though both are presented by the President — see the dedicated section below.
4. Bharat Ratna and Padma Vibhushan are not the same tier — Bharat Ratna is India's single highest civilian honour with no formal category system; the Padma Awards are a separate three-tier scheme (Vibhushan > Bhushan > Shri) below it.

The Bharat Ratna (2019–2026)

India's highest civilian award has no fixed annual quota — some years see none at all, and one year in this window saw an unprecedented five.

Charan Singh, Rao and Swaminathan were conferred together at Rashtrapati Bhavan on 30 March 2024; Advani received his separately at his residence the next day. 2024 is the only year on record where five Bharat Ratnas were announced in one calendar year — RPSC's preferred way of testing this is a "how many" or "which of the following did NOT receive it in 2024" question. The running total after the 2024 batch stands at 53 Bharat Ratna recipients since the award's 1954 institution (Union Home Ministry figure, as reported).

UPSC/RPSC relevance: No direct RAS PYQ found yet on the 2024 batch specifically; closest adjacent — RAS Prelims 2016 Q127 tested a related but distinct fact (a foreign civilian honour conferred on an Indian PM — see the "Foreign Honours" section below), showing RPSC's general appetite for "who received India's/another country's highest civilian honour" questions. Expect similar direct treatment of the 2024 Bharat Ratna batch in upcoming papers.

The Padma Awards (2021–2026)

The Padma Awards are India's second-highest civilian honours after the Bharat Ratna, in three descending tiers — Padma Vibhushan (exceptional and distinguished service), Padma Bhushan (distinguished service of a high order), and Padma Shri (distinguished service) — announced around Republic Day each January.

Year-by-year counts

*Totals for 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026 include a small number of joint/duo awards counted once per case. The 2024 sub-counts (30 women, 8 in the combined Foreigners/NRI/PIO/OCI category, 9 posthumous) are per the MHA press note of 25 January 2024.

Exam angle: RPSC likes testing the count, not just the names — "how many Padma Vibhushan were conferred in [year]" or "which year had the highest number of Padma Shri awards" (2025 and 2026 are both close to each other at 113; 2022 had 107). Learn the Vibhushan/Bhushan/Shri counts as a memorised row, the same way the literary-awards chapter recommends learning award winners as a year-by-year series.

Padma Vibhushan recipients, full list (2021–2026)

The Vibhushan tier is small enough each year (4–7 people) to memorise by name — RPSC has a documented pattern of asking "who among the following received the Padma Vibhushan in [year]."

Common mistake: In 2022, all four Padma Vibhushan recipients except Prabha Atre were posthumous (Kalyan Singh, Bipin Rawat, Radheyshyam Khemka) — don't assume the top civilian tier always skews toward living honourees. The 2025 batch shows the same pattern (3 of 7 posthumous), and 2026 had 2 of 5 posthumous (Dharmendra, Achuthanandan).

No Rajasthan-based Padma Vibhushan recipient appears in the 2021–2026 window — Rajasthan's only Padma Vibhushan recipient on record is industrialist Ghanshyam Das Birla (1957), well outside this exam's relevant period.

Rajasthan-specific recipients (all categories, 2021–2026)

This is the detail RPSC's Rajasthan-focused current-affairs paper prioritises above the national counts.

Exam angle: Devendra Jhajharia (Churu) progressing from Padma Shri (2012) to Padma Bhushan (2022) is a favourite RPSC "career trajectory" fact — the same person receiving two different Padma tiers years apart. Begam Batool's 2025 Padma Shri is also notable because she had already received the central government's Nari Shakti Puraskar (award-year 2021, conferred March 2022) — a genuine double-honouree worth cross-referencing with the Nari Shakti Puraskar section below. Maya Tandon's 2024 Padma Shri (some sources misreport it as 2023) recognises her decades of road-safety work through Jaipur's "Sahayta" organisation — the official award-year is 2024, per the Ministry of Home Affairs' 25 January 2024 press note.

Notable "firsts" and newsworthy items, year by year

• 2021: Foreign PM Shinzo Abe among the Padma Vibhushan class. The year also produced the country's first transwoman Padma Shri recipient — Matha B. Manjamma Jogathi (Art category, Karnataka), the Jogathi Nritya folk dancer and Kannada theatre artist who was also the first transwoman president of the Karnataka Janapada Academy.
• 2022: Politically contentious year — Ghulam Nabi Azad and Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee's Padma Bhushan awards drew commentary, alongside a Vibhushan class that was mostly posthumous.
• 2023: Two posthumous Padma Vibhushan for former Uttar Pradesh chief ministers is not the pattern here — rather, B. V. Doshi (architect) and Mulayam Singh Yadav were both posthumous Vibhushan recipients from very different fields, alongside a large Gujarat contingent among the Padma Shri class.
• 2024: M. Venkaiah Naidu (immediate past Vice President) and film veterans Chiranjeevi and Vyjayanthimala Bali headlined the Vibhushan class. Bindeshwar Pathak's Padma Vibhushan was posthumous — the Sulabh International founder died on 15 August 2023, months before the January 2024 announcement; he had earlier received the Padma Bhushan in 1991, so don't conflate the two honours.
• 2025: Osamu Suzuki's posthumous Padma Vibhushan is a rare instance of the honour going to a foreign national; three of the seven Vibhushan recipients that year were posthumous.
• 2026: Dharmendra and V. S. Achuthanandan both received posthumous Padma Vibhushan; the year's 16 posthumous awards (across all tiers) ties 2021 for the highest posthumous count in this window. Coverage also names cricketer Rohit Sharma and playback singer Alka Yagnik among the year's widely-reported recipients, though this review could not independently confirm their exact award tier from a primary source.

The Gandhi Peace Prize (2018–2026)

Instituted in 1995 by the Ministry of Culture, this award has a documented, exam-relevant quirk: its announcement can lag the "award year" it is named for by several years.

Gita Press accepted the Gandhi Peace Prize citation "for the year 2021" but declined the accompanying ₹1 crore cash component, citing its policy of not accepting donations — a genuinely useful detail since it demonstrates the award has a cash element that isn't always taken up. The decision was made by a jury headed by the Prime Minister, and it drew political controversy over Gita Press's historical positions.

As of 14 August 2026, the Gita Press award (for 2021, announced June 2023) remains the most recent confirmed Gandhi Peace Prize recipient found in this review — no award "for 2022," "2023," "2024" or "2025" has surfaced. RAS aspirants should treat this as an open/stalled cadence rather than assume an annual award has quietly continued.

UPSC/RPSC relevance: Directly asked — RAS Prelims 2023 Q119, "Which institution in India has been selected for Gandhi Peace Award 2021?" (Answer: Gita Press, Gorakhpur). This is one of the clearest examples in the current-affairs syllabus of RPSC testing an award exactly at the point where its "year" and its "announcement date" diverge — expect this specific gap (2021 award, 2023 announcement) to keep appearing as a distractor pattern in future papers.

The Nari Shakti Puraskar — genuinely uncertain recent status

The Nari Shakti Puraskar (Ministry of Women & Child Development) is conferred around International Women's Day (8 March) by the President.

The combined 2020+2021 ceremony of 8 March 2022 is the last Nari Shakti Puraskar conferment on record as of this chapter's last check. No official discontinuation notice exists either — so the precise, exam-safe phrasing is: "last conferred for award-year 2021 (ceremony 8 March 2022); no subsequent recipient lists announced," not "discontinued." Reinforcing signals: official government coverage of both 8 March 2025 and 8 March 2026 describes a "Nari Shakti se Viksit Bharat" conference with panel discussions, not a Puraskar conferral, and no Rashtrapati Bhavan record of any later NSP ceremony exists. Online pages claiming "Nari Shakti Puraskar 2023/2024 winners" are content-farm speculation — treat any such list with suspicion unless a primary Ministry source confirms it.

Common mistake — real historical PYQ trap: RAS Prelims 2021 Q1 tested a 2018 Nari Shakti Puraskar recipient, Ruma Devi, a handicrafts entrepreneur — and the correct answer hinged on knowing she grew up in Rawatsar village, Barmer district, not "Jasrapur (Khetari)" (a real place, but in Jhunjhunu district, hundreds of kilometres away). This is exactly the kind of "right person, wrong place-name" substitution RPSC builds into Rajasthan-linked award questions — don't just learn the award and the name, learn the specific district too.

UPSC/RPSC relevance: Asked directly in RAS Prelims 2021 Q1 (Ruma Devi, Nari Shakti Puraskar 2018, Barmer district). No direct PYQ found yet on the 2019–2021 editions covered above; expect RPSC to keep testing this award primarily through its Rajasthan-recipient angle, exactly as it did with Ruma Devi — which makes Begam Batool (Jaipur, award-year 2021) the single most exam-plausible fact in this section.

Related but Distinct — National Awards for the Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities

Don't confuse this with the Padma Awards even though both are presented by the President at Rashtrapati Bhavan. The National Awards for the Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities are a separate annual scheme run by the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (DEPwD), honouring individuals and organisations across categories like "Sarvshreshth Divyangjan" (best divyang individuals). President Droupadi Murmu presented the 2024 edition on 3 December 2024 in New Delhi.

UPSC/RPSC relevance: Directly asked — RAS Prelims 2024 Q108, a matching question pairing three 2024 Sarvshreshth Divyangjan awardees (Ananya Bijesh, Prateek Khandelwal, Priyanka Deepak Dabade) to their fields of outstanding work (Music, Accessibility, and Art & Culture respectively). This confirms RPSC treats the disability-empowerment awards as squarely within the "Major Awards" current-affairs bucket, distinct from the Padma Awards — worth a quick glance at that year's DEPwD list rather than assuming it overlaps with the Padma Awards table above.

Also Tested — Foreign Honours Conferred on Indians

Two genuine past RPSC questions show the syllabus line also covers the reverse direction — international awards given to Indians, separate from India's own award schemes:

• RAS Prelims 2021 Q133 asked who received the International Eni Award 2020 (the "Nobel Prize of energy research," from the Italian energy company Eni) — answered by Bharat Ratna Professor C.N.R. Rao, for his work on metal oxides, carbon nanotubes and graphene-family materials for energy storage. The COVID-delayed ceremony was held 14 October 2021 in Rome, though the prize itself was designated for 2020 — another instance of the "award year vs. ceremony year" gap this chapter keeps flagging.
• RAS Prelims 2016 Q127 asked which honour Afghan President Ashraf Ghani conferred on Prime Minister Narendra Modi — the Amir Amanullah Khan Award, Afghanistan's highest civilian honour, given on 4 June 2016 after the inauguration of the Afghan-India Friendship Dam in Herat.

Both are useful reminders that "major awards" in this syllabus line isn't limited to India's own honours — RPSC has tested the reverse direction too.

Important for RAS

Prelims Focus

• Padma Vibhushan lists — learn them by name each year. Small enough (4–7 people) to memorise fully, and RPSC has a documented pattern of testing them directly.
• Rajasthan Padma recipients — the table above is the highest-yield sub-list in the whole topic, given RPSC's "special reference to Rajasthan" framing.
• Counter-intuitive patterns — the 2024 Bharat Ratna batch (5 recipients in one year) and the Gandhi Peace Prize's 2021-award / 2023-announcement gap. RPSC tests both with "how many" or "which year" phrasing.
• Nari Shakti Puraskar — last conferred for award-year 2021 (combined 2020+2021 ceremony, 8 March 2022). Don't answer a question about a 2022/2023/2024/2025 recipient with a guessed name; no such conferral is on record.
• Confusion traps — Gandhi Peace Prize against Indira Gandhi Prize, and the National Awards for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities against the Padma Awards. Both are documented RPSC traps.

Interview Angles

• Several 2024–2026 Padma Vibhushan and Bharat Ratna honours went posthumously to major political figures across party lines (Charan Singh, Narasimha Rao, Kalyan Singh, Mulayam Singh Yadav) — a panel could ask what this pattern signals about how India's civilian-honours system engages with political legacy versus living achievement.
• Rajasthan's Padma recipients since 2021 skew heavily toward folk art, social work and disability-inclusive sport (Lakha Khan Manganiar, Shyam Sundar Paliwal, Avani Lekhara, Devendra Jhajharia) rather than mainstream politics or bureaucracy — a panel could ask what this says about which parts of Rajasthan's contribution to national life get formally recognised.

This topic sits under RPSC's Prelims-only "Current Affairs & Issues" block — there is no separate Mains "civilian honours" line, so no forced cross-paper box is needed here, though a working knowledge of Rajasthan's own award-winners can support Paper-IV cultural-awareness answers or interview conversation about the state's social and cultural contributions.

Practice — Quick Self-Check

Practice — Statement-Based (RPSC Style)

Practice — "Which Is/Are NOT Correct" (Inverted Phrasing)

Key Terms

• Bharat Ratna — India's highest civilian honour, with no fixed annual quota; 53 recipients since 1954 as of the 2024 batch.
• Padma Vibhushan / Padma Bhushan / Padma Shri — India's three-tier civilian honours below the Bharat Ratna, announced around Republic Day each January.
• Gandhi Peace Prize — Government of India (Ministry of Culture) honour, instituted 1995; distinct from the privately-administered Indira Gandhi Prize.
• Nari Shakti Puraskar — Ministry of Women & Child Development honour presented around International Women's Day (8 March); last conferred for award-year 2021 (ceremony 8 March 2022), with no subsequent recipient lists on record.
• National Awards for the Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities — a separate DEPwD scheme (e.g., "Sarvshreshth Divyangjan"), not a Padma Awards category.
• International Eni Award — a foreign (Italian) energy-research honour, given to C.N.R. Rao for 2020.

More in This Series

• Literary Awards & Authors — Nobel Literature, Booker, Jnanpith, Sahitya Akademi, Meera Puraskar
• National Sports Awards — Khel Ratna, Arjuna, Dronacharya, Dhyan Chand
• International Awards — Nobel Prizes beyond Literature, Ramon Magsaysay, Right Livelihood and more
• International Events of 2026 — BRICS Chairship, summits, and Rajasthan's global calendar

Sources & Verification

All facts in this chapter were checked as of 15 August 2026, drawing on PIB releases (including PRID 1706590 for the Gandhi Peace Prize 2020 and PRID 1803859/1803480 for the Nari Shakti Puraskar), the official Padma Awards portal and citation PDFs, the MHA press note of 25 January 2024, Ministry of I&B official social posts, Drishti IAS, and cross-checked news coverage (Deccan Herald, The Week, India TV, Sunday Guardian, Gulf News, and others), each cross-referenced across at least two independent sources. Genuine RAS PYQs are cited directly from BharatNotes' verified solved-PYQ bank (RAS Prelims 2013 Q133, 2016 Q127, 2021 Q1, 2021 Q133, 2023 Q119, 2024 Q108).

Five facts originally flagged as unconfirmed in this chapter's first edition were resolved in a follow-up verification pass (15 August 2026): Maya Tandon's Padma Shri is officially 2024 (the "2023" claim in some sources is an error); the 2024 Padma sub-counts are 30 women, 8 in the combined Foreigners/NRI/PIO/OCI category, and 9 posthumous (MHA press note); the 2021 first-transwoman Padma Shri recipient is Matha B. Manjamma Jogathi (Art, Karnataka); the Gandhi Peace Prize 2020 announcement date of 22 March 2021 is PIB-confirmed (PRID 1706590), as is its status as the prize's first posthumous conferment; and Bindeshwar Pathak (d. 15 August 2023) received an officially posthumous Padma Vibhushan 2024, per the padmaawards.gov.in citation. One earlier claim was corrected: Begam Batool's Nari Shakti Puraskar is for award-year 2021, conferred 8 March 2022 at the combined 2020+2021 ceremony — an earlier edition of this chapter incorrectly stated "award-year 2022, conferred March 2023"; no award-year-2022 ceremony ever took place (nominations were invited but no conferral is on record).