Awards – MCQ – GK Questions

The Khel Ratna was instituted in 1991–92 as the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award. On 6 August 2021, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced it would be renamed to the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award, honouring the hockey legend born on 29 August 1905 — the date observed as National Sports Day.

Murlikant Petkar lost the use of his right arm in the 1965 Indo-Pakistan War. He then trained as a para-swimmer and won India's first-ever Paralympic gold medal at the 1972 Heidelberg Games in the 50m freestyle swimming event. At the 2025 ceremony (age 80), he received the Lifetime Arjuna Award and the room gave him a standing ovation. He was personally received by President Murmu.

Manu Bhaker won bronze in the Women's 10m Air Pistol individual event and a second bronze in the 10m Air Pistol Mixed Team event alongside Sarabjot Singh at Paris 2024. No Indian athlete had previously won two medals in a single Olympics since India began participating as an independent nation in 1948.

The Khel Ratna for 2024 was presented on 17 January 2025 at Rashtrapati Bhavan. Manu Bhaker won two bronze medals at Paris 2024 Olympics (first Indian to win 2 medals in single Olympics as independent nation). D. Gukesh became the youngest World Chess Champion at 18 in December 2024. Harmanpreet Singh captained the hockey team to a Paris 2024 bronze. Praveen Kumar won the Paralympic High Jump gold (T64) in Paris 2024.

Gulzar received the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 2013 at the 61st National Film Awards and the Jnanpith Award in 2023 (jointly with Jagadguru Rambhadracharya). The Jnanpith is India's highest literary honour given by Bharatiya Jnanpith. No other person has received both India's highest cinema honour and India's highest literary honour.

V.K. Murthy — Varahalu Venkateshwara Murthy — received the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 2008 at the 56th National Film Awards. He was the first cinematographer to receive the award in its forty-year history. He is best known for his collaboration with director Guru Dutt, particularly the visual style of Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959) and Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam (1962).

Four sibling pairs have received the award: B.N. Reddy (1974) and B. Nagi Reddy (1986); Raj Kapoor (1987) and Shashi Kapoor (2014); Lata Mangeshkar (1989) and Asha Bhosle (2000); B.R. Chopra (1998) and Yash Chopra (2001). The Lata-Asha pair is the most frequently asked in exams because both are widely known to the general public.

Prithviraj Kapoor received the award posthumously in 1971 — the award was presented to his son Raj Kapoor at the 19th National Film Awards. Raj Kapoor himself then won the award sixteen years later in 1987. Vinod Khanna died in April 2017 and the award for that year was given to him posthumously. These are the only two posthumous awards in the prize's entire history.

Mohanlal was awarded the Dadasaheb Phalke Award for 2023, presented at the 71st National Film Awards ceremony on 23 September 2025. At 65 years of age at the time of presentation, he is the youngest person to have received the award. He is the second recipient primarily associated with Malayalam cinema, after Adoor Gopalakrishnan (2004).

The Dadasaheb Phalke Award was instituted in 1969 to mark the birth centenary of Dhundiraj Govind Phalke (born 30 April 1870). The first award was given to Devika Rani at the 17th National Film Awards. She was a pioneering actress and producer known as the first lady of Indian cinema who helped build Bombay Talkies in the 1930s.

From 1965 to 1981 (the first 17 awards), the Jnanpith was given for a specific outstanding work — similar to the Nobel Prize's association with a particular book or play. The rules were revised from the 18th award (1982) to recognise a writer's overall contribution to literature across their career, making it a true lifetime achievement award. This distinction appears in UPSC questions about the selection criteria and rule changes.

The 58th Jnanpith Award for 2023 was given jointly to Gulzar (the poet-lyricist-filmmaker, for Urdu literature) and Jagadguru Rambhadracharya (Sanskrit scholar, devotional poet, and founder of Tulsi Peeth at Chitrakoot, for Sanskrit literature). Gulzar had previously received the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 2013. This was the sixth joint award in the prize's history.

Amitav Ghosh received the 54th Jnanpith Award in 2018. English was added to the list of eligible languages in 2013, and Ghosh became the first — and, as of 2025, the only — writer in English to win the award. His novels engage with colonialism, migration, and environmental history across the Indian Ocean world.

18. Vairamuthu was named the recipient of the 60th Jnanpith Award for 2025, announced by Bharatiya Jnanpith in March 2026. He is the third Tamil writer to receive the award after Akilan (1975) and Jayakanthan (2002), and the first to be honoured primarily for poetry rather than prose. The selection committee was chaired by Pratibha Ray, who herself won the Jnanpith in 2011.

Ashapoorna Devi became the first woman to win the Jnanpith Award in 1976 — eleven years after the prize was first given. She was honoured for her Bengali novel Prothom Protishruti (The First Promise, 1965), the opening volume of a trilogy tracing three generations of women in Bengal. Eight women in total have won the award through 2025.

7. Sankara Kurup, a Malayalam poet, received the inaugural Jnanpith Award in 1965 for his poetry collection Odakkuzhal (The Bamboo Flute), published in 1950. The citation ceremony was held on 19 November 1966. Kurup was the first of sixty recipients across sixty editions of the award from 1965 to 2025.

Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al Said of Oman (2019) and Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman of Bangladesh (2020) were both awarded the Gandhi Peace Prize posthumously. Qaboos had died in January 2020; Mujibur Rahman had been assassinated in 1975. The jury met on 19 March 2021 and selected both recipients in one session — the 2019 and 2020 awards were announced together. This was the first time the prize had been given posthumously in its twenty-six-year history.

The Gandhi Peace Prize jury is chaired by the Prime Minister of India. The other members are the Chief Justice of India, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha (or the leader of the largest opposition party), the Speaker of the Lok Sabha, and two eminent persons appointed for a three-year term. This is a common exam question because it is unusual for a PM to chair an awards jury — it reflects the prize's status as a high-level national honour with diplomatic significance.

The Gandhi Peace Prize was withheld from 2006 to 2012 inclusive — a period of seven consecutive years. The jury, which has the explicit authority to withhold the award if no nominee meets the required standard, exercised this authority for this entire stretch. The prize resumed in 2013 when it was given to Chandi Prasad Bhatt. Note: the 2004 prize was NOT withheld — it was given to Coretta Scott King of the USA. Some older sources incorrectly list 2004 as withheld.

The 2000 Gandhi Peace Prize was given jointly to Nelson Mandela, the former President of South Africa who led the post-apartheid democratic transition, and to Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, the microfinance institution founded by Muhammad Yunus. This was the only joint award between recipients from two different countries in the prize's history. It is also the only year where the prize went simultaneously to an individual political leader and to a financial institution.