Padma Vibhushan for LK Advani, Parkash Singh Badal, Amitabh Bachchan, Bill and Melinda conferred with Padma Bhushan

NEW DELHI: BJP's veteran politician LK Advani, who is a film buff, has the rare honour of receiving this year's Padma Vibhushan awards along with Hindi cinema's two great artistes Dilip Kumar and Amitabh Bachchan. Bill and Melinda Gates ( Padma Bhushan) were in a list of several foreigners conferred with the Padma awards.

Others among the nine bestowed with the Padma Vibhushan were Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and senior advocate KK Venugopal. Among 20 awarded the Padma Bhushan this year are lawyer Harish Salve, journalist Swapan Dasgupta and former Lok Sabha secretary general Subhash Kashyap.

ASHOK CHAKRA FOR TWO

Among other awards, the highest peacetime military honour will be presented on Monday to the next of kin of Major Mukund Varadarajan and Naik Neeraj Kumar, two army personnel, who laid down their lives combating militants in Kashmir. The died battling groups of militants in separate operations in Shopian and Kupwara districts of Kashmir respectively.
Kumar was named for the award today, the announcement regarding Varadarajan's selection was made on August 15 last year. "Major Mukund Varadarajan, Company Commander, received information about the presence of three terrorists in village of Shopian district of Jammu and Kashmir on April 25, 2014. This group had targeted polling officials just a day prior. Major Mukund acted swiftly by deploying troops in an effective cordon and simultaneously evacuated civilians from the target house," an Army spokesman told PTI.

Major Mukund led from the front the demolition team and used the resources available to him in a critically short time period to bring down the target house. "This aggressive action forced the terrorists to shift their position to an outhouse in the compound. Major Mukund along with his buddy Sepoy Vikram displaying raw courage, crawled in proximity to the outhouse. The officer lobbed a grenade inside the cement outhouse killing one terrorist instantaneously. Another terrorist present in the outhouse opened a burst of auto fire thereby seriously injuring Major Mukund," he said.

The spokesman said although bleeding profusely, the officer crawled ahead unmindful of his grave injury, fired and neutralised the second terrorist. "The elimination of terrorist avenged the killing of the election officials within 24 hours and restored faith of public in democracy and the Indian Army. Major Mukund Varadarajan was evacuated but succumbed to his injuries," he said. Naik Neeraj was part of the team that carried out a Search and destroy operation in Kalaroos area of Kupwara district on August 24 last year.