The government reportedly rejected nominations of famous personalities like M S Dhoni, Spiritual Leader Ram Rahim, Arnab Goswami for the prestigious Padma Awards.

According to a Indian Express report, the government turned down proposals to give Padam Awards to certain famous personalities like BJD MP Baijayant Panda, air hostess the late Neerja Bhanot, spiritual leader baba Ram Rahim, Tabla Maestro Zakir Hussain, former captain of Indian cricket team M S Dhoni, these names were rejected out of the total 18,768 names that were made public by the Home Ministry.

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The award ceremony is said to take place by the end of end of March in the Rashtrapati Bhawan.

The report also states that there were some bollywood personalities whose names were nominated but were later denied- it included the name of Manoj Bajpayee, Shri Devi, singer Sonu Nigam and Anu Malik and film maker Vidhu Vinod Chopra.

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The award search committee comprises of Bureaucrats and eminent personalities and they considered 18 other names like S Chinny Krishna, Vice Chairman, Animal welfare board of India(AWBI), Tabla Maestro Zakir Hussain, but only 3 out of the 18 names were confirmed for the award. Their names are- Musician Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, Wrestler Sakshi Malik, gymnast Dipa Karmakar.

Among other nominees who did not make the confirmed list were archer Dola Banerjee from West Bengal, Shooter Abhinav Bindra, Badminton player Jwala Gutta, media personality Pritish Nandy and fashion designer Rohit Bal!

Although the reason why these names were rejected from the list of Padma Award Nominees- is still not clear.