Padma Awards

The Padma Awards for India seek to recognise and honour the contributions made in all fields, which is beneficial of the mankind. An act of public service must be involved in order to be recommended for the Padma Awards. The Padma Awards are classified into three: Padma shree, Padma bhushan and Padma Vibhushan. Among the three, Padma Vibhushan ranks the highest. Bharat Ratna is the highest civilian award of India. Padma bhushan ranks second in the list. The medal has a picture of lotus embossed in it and the words Padma Vibhushan are engraved in Devanagari script. The first recipients include Zakir Hussain, Satyendranath bose, V K Krishna Menon, Nand Lal Bose and two others.