Ronen Sen

Jan. 25: Kantilal Hastimal Sancheti, a doctor in whose hospital Anna Hazare was admitted recently, and T.V. Rajeswar, the former Uttar Pradesh governor who incessantly baited Mulayam Singh Yadav when he was chief minister, are among the standout names in the list of Padma awardees this year.

Sancheti, an orthopaedic surgeon who has a health care centre in Pune, and Rajeswar, now superannuated, were picked for the Vibhushan, the jewel in the lotus crown and the second-highest civilian honour in India after the Bharat Ratna. The Vibhushan is awarded for “exceptional and distinguished service”.

Sancheti’s son Parag, also a doctor, had treated Hazare when he was recently diagnosed with a serious chest infection. Parag advised Hazare to call off the hunger fast he had planned to stage and refrain from campaigning for the Assembly elections in the cold weather.

Sancheti Sr had assisted the US-based Dr Chittaranjan Ranawat in the knee-replacement surgery on then Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee in 2000. The surgeon, credited with inventing India’s first indigenous knee implant — the Indus Knee — had received the Padma Shri in 1991 and the Padma Bhushan in 2001.

Rajeswar’s nomination (from the civil service discipline) intrigued the Mulayam-headed Samajwadi Party. Till recently, party sources were confident that if the Uttar Pradesh verdict yielded a hung Assembly, the Congress would have “no choice” but to support a government headed by them to “uphold secularism”.

“We do not wish to read a deeper signal in Rajeswar’s choice,” a source said, recalling that in 2007, weeks before the state elections, he had recommended the dismissal of the Samajwadi government on law-and-order grounds.

The number of nominees from trade and industry has come down to seven from 12 last year. The dip comes a little over a month after the Prime Minister expressed disappointment with “negative comments” by a section of industry leaders.

From art, 35 personalities — one less than last year — have made it this time. This year’s awardees include artist and sculptor K.G. Subramanyan, the late Bhupen Hazarika and cartoonist Mario Miranda (Vibhushan); actors Shabana Azmi and Dharmendra, painter Jatin Das, sculptor and installation artist Anish Kapoor, sarod maestro Buddhadev Das Gupta and filmmaker Mira Nair (Bhushan); and music composer Vanraj Bhatia, vocalist Zia Fariduddin Dagar and vocalists Ramakant and Umakant Gundecha (Shri).

The Bhushan awardees include Khaled Choudhury (theatre) from Bengal.

The Indo-US nuclear deal was not forgotten this year, too. Ronen Sen, the former ambassador to the US and one of the architects of the deal, was given the Bhushan. Anil Kakodkar (former Atomic Energy Commission chairperson) and Shyam Saran (former foreign secretary) had been awarded earlier.

Rajeswar apart, two former civil servants got the Padma Bhushan: N. Vittal, the former central vigilance commissioner, and Mata Prasad, a former bureaucrat of Uttar Pradesh. Prasad stood out as the only unblemished official during the Mulayam regime that had enmeshed the former chief ministers’ favourite civil servants in several scams.