National Sports Awards 2025 — Complete Winners List with Profiles

The Paris Olympics in July and August 2024 gave India its biggest single-Games haul in a non-boycott year: six medals, including Neeraj Chopra's javelin silver and Manu Bhaker's unprecedented two individual bronze medals in shooting. But it was the Paris Paralympics in late August and September that produced the defining number of the cycle — twenty-nine medals, including seven gold, nine silver, and thirteen bronze. That was India's best Paralympic performance by a distance, and it explains why seventeen of the thirty-two Arjuna Awards at this ceremony went to para-athletes — a proportion that had never been seen before.

The Khel Ratna selection that year generated one of the more public debates around the award in recent memory. Manu Bhaker's initial absence from the Khel Ratna nominations list — despite having won two medals at the same Olympics — drew immediate criticism from athletes, commentators, and the public. The ministry revised the list and included her name. The episode raised substantive questions about the consistency of selection criteria and the transparency of the nominations process, questions that the ministry did not answer fully before the ceremony. Bhaker herself was gracious in her acceptance, focusing her remarks on gratitude and the team behind her. For competitive exam students, what matters is that she won the award — the controversy is context, not the fact.

The D. Gukesh inclusion was unambiguous. In December 2024, at eighteen years old, he became the youngest World Chess Champion in history, defeating China's Ding Liren in Singapore in a match that ran the full fourteen classical games before Gukesh won in the final game. Chess had not generated this level of mainstream sporting attention in India since Viswanathan Anand's championship years.

Murlikant Petkar's Lifetime Arjuna Award carried a different kind of weight. Petkar had won India's first-ever Paralympic gold medal at the 1972 Heidelberg Paralympics in 50-metre freestyle swimming, having lost the use of his right arm in the 1965 Indo-Pakistan War. He had waited fifty-three years for formal national recognition. At eighty years old, he walked into Rashtrapati Bhavan to a standing ovation from the room.

Manu Bhaker — Shooting (10m Air Pistol)
Manu Bhaker, twenty-two years old at the Paris Olympics, became the first Indian athlete to win two medals at a single Olympic Games since India participated in the modern Olympics as an independent nation. Her 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 came after a painful experience at Tokyo 2020, where her pistol had malfunctioned and she had been eliminated without firing a meaningful shot in the final. The Paris performance erased that memory. She was originally not in the Khel Ratna nominations; the public response to that omission led to her inclusion before the ceremony.

D. Gukesh — Chess
Dommaraju Gukesh was born in Chennai in 2006, which made him eighteen at the time of his world championship win in December 2024. He had become a grandmaster at twelve — the second youngest in Indian history after Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa. At the 2024 FIDE World Chess Championship in Singapore, he defeated defending champion Ding Liren of China across fourteen classical games, winning the decisive fourteenth game to become champion. He is the youngest person to have held the title of FIDE World Chess Champion. His win came less than a year after India's gold at the 2024 Chess Olympiad in Budapest, where he anchored the open team.

Harmanpreet Singh — Hockey (Men's Team, Captain)
Harmanpreet Singh is a drag flicker whose set-piece goals have been the most reliable source of India's scoring from penalty corners across three major tournaments. He captained the Indian men's hockey team to a bronze medal at Paris 2024, following the team's bronze at Tokyo 2020. He was the FIH Player of the Year in 2024 — the second consecutive year he received that honour. The Paris bronze was India's fourth consecutive Olympic medal in hockey, reversing a long drought the sport had suffered. The Khel Ratna recognised the combination of consistent personal performance and team leadership across four years.

Praveen Kumar — Para-Athletics (High Jump, T64 class)
Praveen Kumar won the gold medal in the men's high jump T64 event at the Paris 2024 Paralympics, clearing 2.08 metres — a new Asian Para record at the time of competition. He had won silver at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics and improved it to gold in Paris. His T64 classification covers athletes with limb deficiency or leg length difference in one leg. He was among the seventeen para-athletes who received Arjuna Awards at this ceremony alongside his Khel Ratna, contributing to what was the most para-athlete-inclusive National Sports Awards in Indian history.

Thirty-two athletes received the Arjuna Award at the 2025 ceremony — the largest single-year Arjuna count in recent memory, reflecting the breadth of India's medal haul at the Paris Olympics and Paralympics. The list spans athletics, boxing, chess, hockey, para-sports, shooting, squash, swimming, and wrestling.

Athletics: Jyothi Yarraji (100m hurdles) and Annu Rani (javelin throw) were the Olympic-discipline athletes from the athletics contingent. Mohammed Afsal received the award from the track events category.

Boxing: Nitu Ghangas (flyweight) and Saweety Boora (light-heavyweight), both world boxing champions, were recognised for their sustained dominance at international level.

Chess: Vantika Agrawal, one of India's rising women's chess grandmasters and a contributor to India's Chess Olympiad performance, received the award.

Hockey: Five players from the Paris 2024 bronze-winning men's team — Abhishek, Sanjay, Jarmanpreet Singh, Sukhjeet Singh, and Salima Tete from the women's team — were recognised.

Shooting: Swapnil Suresh Kusale, who won the bronze medal in the 50m Rifle 3 Positions event at Paris 2024, and Sarabjot Singh, who teamed with Manu Bhaker for the Mixed Team bronze, both received the award.

Para-sports (17 athletes): An unprecedented seventeen para-athletes received the Arjuna Award at this ceremony. Prominent among them were: Preeti Pal (para-athletics sprints), Jeevanji Deepthi (long jump, T20), Ajeet Singh and Sachin Khilari (shot put), Dharambir (club throw), Pranav Soorma (discus throw), H. Hokato Sema, Nitesh Kumar (para-badminton), Thulasimathi Murugesan and Nithya Sre Sumathy Sivan (para-badminton), Manisha Ramadass (para-badminton), Kapil Parmar (para-judo — first Indian to win a medal in judo at Paralympics), Mona Agarwal and Rubina Francis (para-shooting), Rakesh Kumar (para-archery).

Other disciplines: Abhay Singh (squash), Sajan Prakash (swimming), and Aman Sehrawat (wrestling).

Lifetime Arjuna Awards: Two veteran athletes received lifetime recognition. Sucha Singh, a long-serving figure in Indian athletics, and Murlikant Rajaram Petkar — an eighty-year-old war veteran who had won India's first-ever Paralympic gold medal at the 1972 Heidelberg Games. Petkar arrived in a wheelchair and was personally received by President Murmu. The standing ovation the room gave him was the most-reported emotional moment of the ceremony.

Dronacharya Awards 2024
Five coaches received the Dronacharya Award at the 2025 ceremony. Deepali Deshpande (shooting), Armando Agnelo Colaco (football), Subhash Rana (para-shooting), Sandeep Sangwan (hockey), and S. Muralidharan (badminton) were recognised for producing international-level athletes or developing the team structures that supported medal performances in 2024. Armando Colaco was notable as a Goan football coach who spent decades working in Indian club football before the award reached him at the national level.

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (MAKA) Trophy
Three universities shared the MAKA Trophy, which is awarded annually to the best-performing university in the inter-university sports competitions. Chandigarh University, Lovely Professional University, and Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar were the three joint recipients. The MAKA Trophy was instituted in 1956–57 and is the oldest sports award in the National Sports Awards system.

Rashtriya Khel Protsahan Puraskar
The Physical Education Foundation of India received the Rashtriya Khel Protsahan Puraskar, given to entities that promote sports participation at the grassroots or institutional level. The award was instituted in 2009.

The name the award carries
The highest award — the Khel Ratna — was called the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award from its institution in 1991–92 until September 2021, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi renamed it the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award, after the hockey legend born on 29 August 1905. The renaming was announced on 6 August 2021. National Sports Day continues to be observed on 29 August, the birth anniversary of Major Dhyan Chand.

• SSC (CGL, CHSL, MTS): Lock in all four Khel Ratna recipients: Manu Bhaker (Shooting), D. Gukesh (Chess — youngest World Chess Champion at 18), Harmanpreet Singh (Hockey — Captain), Praveen Kumar (Para-Athletics — High Jump, Paralympic Gold Paris 2024). The Manu Bhaker double-medal fact — first Indian to win 2 medals in a single Olympic Games as an independent nation — is a near-certain SSC question.
• UPSC Prelims: Three angles. First, Murlikant Petkar — India's first Paralympic gold medallist (1972 Heidelberg, 50m freestyle swimming), received Lifetime Arjuna Award at age 80. Second, record 17 para-athletes received Arjuna Awards — reflects Paris 2024 Paralympics (India's best: 29 medals including 7 gold). Third, Khel Ratna was renamed from Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna to Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna in September 2021 — this appears in UPSC questions about sports institutions.
• Railway (NTPC, Group D): Ceremony date (17 January 2025), venue (Rashtrapati Bhavan), Khel Ratna prize (?25 lakh), Arjuna Award prize (?15 lakh). Gukesh = youngest World Chess Champion. Praveen Kumar = Paralympic High Jump gold. Manu Bhaker = double bronze Paris 2024.
• Banking (IBPS, SBI, RBI): All four Khel Ratna names are standard banking current affairs. Harmanpreet Singh = FIH Player of the Year 2024. D. Gukesh = defeated Ding Liren in December 2024 in Singapore. MAKA Trophy winners (Chandigarh University, LPU, GNDU Amritsar).
• Common exam traps:
  1. These awards are formally the "National Sports Awards 2024" (recognising 2024 performance) but the ceremony was held on 17 January 2025. Both years appear in questions — read carefully which year is being asked.
  2. Manu Bhaker was initially NOT in the Khel Ratna nominees list — she was added after public outcry. For exam purposes, she DID receive it. The controversy is context only.
  3. Murlikant Petkar received a LIFETIME Arjuna Award, not the regular Arjuna Award, and not the Khel Ratna. He is India's first Paralympic gold medallist (1972), NOT Paris 2024.
  4. Dronacharya Award went to FIVE coaches (Deepali Deshpande, Armando Colaco, Subhash Rana, Sandeep Sangwan, S. Muralidharan). Do not confuse the Dronacharya with the Dhyan Chand (Lifetime Achievement) award.
  5. National Sports Day is 29 August — Major Dhyan Chand's birthday. The 2025 ceremony was NOT on 29 August; it was shifted to January due to the Olympic year.