President Ramnath Kovind awarded Padma Awards to various eminent personalities, including a number of litterateurs, entrepreneurs, academicians and artists from Gujarat, at a function held at the Rashtrapati Bhavan Tuesday. Two of the awardees – former Chief Minister Keshubhai Patel and renowned architect BV Doshi – have been conferred with Padma Bhushan. Patel was conferred with the award posthumously. While most of the awardees or their representatives (in case of posthumous honour) received the award from President Kovind, Doshi (94) could not travel to Delhi to receive the award. "Since he is 94 years old, due to weather and Covid factors, he could not personally go to receive the award. We were also told that nobody could go and receive the award in his place. We were told that it would be sent to the state," Doshi's daughter Radhika told The Indian Express. Doshi was conferred the Padma Bhushan in 2020. In 2018, he became the first Indian to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize – one of the most prestigious honours in architecture and equivalent to the Nobel prize. The Padma Shri awardees from Gujarat who were felicitated include late legendary figures of Gujarati film & music industry Mahesh & Naresh Kanodia (posthumous); renowned poet and folk singer Dadudan Gadhvi (posthumous); Jesuit priest from Spain, who lived in India for five decades and authored various books on mathematics in Gujarati, Father Valles (posthumous); noted educationist Chandrakant Mehta; and noted entrepreneur and founder of United Phosphorous Limited Rajnikant Shroff. On Monday, other noted personalities from the state like Shahbuddin Rathod, Sarita Joshi, Gafur Bilakhia, Sudhir Jain and Yezdi Karanjia were also honoured with the Padma Shri. The Office of Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel took to social media to congratulate all the Padma award recipients from the state.
