Bengaluru: Sri Vishveshateertha Swamiji Sri Pejawar Adhokhaja Matha Udupi, who passed away recently, Harekala Hajabba from Mangaluru and George Fernandes have been selected for this year’s Padma awards.
The Padma awards are conferred on personalities who have achieved a lot in fields like social work, public affairs, science and engineering, trade and industry, medicine, literature and education, sports, civil service etc.
The Pejawar seer and George Fernandes will receive the Padma Vibhushan award posthumously.
George Fernandes has a big fan following across India. He has been conferred the award under the ‘public affairs’ category. The Pejawar seer is considered to be the patron of the VHP and other Hindu organisations and is being conferred the award under the ‘others-spiritualism’ category.
Hajabba, popularly known as ‘Akshara Santa’ or ‘Saint of Letters’ for saving money from selling oranges and starting a primary school to educate the children in his village in Mangaluru, has been chosen to receive the Padma Shri award for the ‘social work’ category.
The other Padma Shri awardees from Karnataka are M. P. Ganesh (Sports), Dr. Bangalore Gangadhar (Medicine), Bharat Goenka (Trade and Industry), Tulasi Gowda, popularly known as the ‘Encyclopedia of Forest’, (Social Work), K V Sampath Kumar and Vidushi Jayalakshmi K.S (duo) (Literature and Education-Journalism) and Vijay Sankeshwar (Trade and Industry).
