Bhubaneswar: Para shuttler Pramod Bhagat is the eighth sportsperson from Odisha to have been conferred with Arjuna Award. He received the prestigious award from President Ram Nath Kovind at a special ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhawan in New Delhi on Thursday evening.
A native of Bargarh, Bhagat had recently won two gold medals – men’s singles and men’s doubles – at the BWF Para-Badminton World Championships.
Arjuna Award, instituted by the government in 1961, is given to sportspersons for their consistent outstanding performance for four consecutive years. The awardees are felicitated with a cash prize of Rs 5 lakh, a bronze statuette of Arjuna of Mahabharata with bow and arrow, and a scroll.
Odisha, which has become a major venue for hosting international sporting events in the recent past, has produced numerous prayers of national and international repute.
Here’s the list of seven other Arjuna awardees from the state:
K Ravi Kumar
Bijaya Kumar Satapathy
Hockey is the other sports in which Odisha has produced champions and three Arjuna awardees.
Dilip Tirkey
Jyoti Sunita Kullu
A former India captain, she led the country to an Asian Games bronze at Doha and was part of the silver medal winning team at the Melbourne Commonwealth Games in 2006. A native of Sundargarh, she was first selected for Indira Gandhi Women Hockey Tournament in 1996. She was the highest scorer in the 2002 Champions Challenge held at Johannesburg, South Africa. She netted five goals in six matches. She was part of the gold-winning Team India at the Commonwealth Games held in England. She was conferred with the Arjuna Award in 2007.
Ignace Tirkey
Rachita Mistry (Panda)
A native of Rourkela, she entered the sprinting arena with the dream to become India’s fastest woman. This passion made her to take admission in a sports hostel in Cuttack at a very young age. In 1995, Rachita got married to a fellow athlete and moved to Maharashtra. She conceived soon after and delivered a girl in March 1996. Though the news of her pregnancy ahead of the Asian Athletics Championships initially rang alarm bells for this promising runner, it did not stop her from pursuing her dream. Many of Rachita’s biggest athletic landmarks came after childbirth. In May 2000, she broke the 100 metre national record held by her idol, PT Usha. Rachita’s 11.38 second timing remained unbroken for 16 years until Dutee Chand, another Odia, set a new record of 11.33 sec in 2016. Mistry retired after the 2002 Asian Games in Busan. In 1998, she was conferred Arjuna Award for her contribution to Indian athletics.
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