Punjab Government is all set to honour its sporting legends who have earned laurels at the international level with the State’s biggest sports award — Maharaja Ranjit Singh Award. Happening for the first time, the Government would honour a total of 18 legends from the sports arena.
Among the awardees are triple Olympic Gold winner Hockey player Balbir Singh Senior, Commonwealth and Asian Games Champion Milkha Singh, Asia’s best athlete Gurbachan Singh Randhawa, India’s lone World Cup hockey captain Ajit Pal Singh, India’s spin bowler Bishan Singh Bedi, and first gold medal winning Indian Woman athlete at Asian Games Kamaljeet Kaur Sandhu.
Apart from them, Brigadier Harcharan Singh, Colonel Balbir Singh, Baldev Singh, Harmik Singh, Hardeep Singh, Jagjeet Singh, Gulshan Rai, Jaipal Singh, Gurpreet Singh, Balwinder Singh Fidda, Paramjit Singh and Harbhajan Singh — who have earlier been bestowed with Padma Shri or Arjuna Award by the Union Government — would also be honoured with the Maharaja Ranjit Singh Award.
Announcing this, the state’s was Sports and Youth Affairs Minister Rana Gurmit Singh Sodhi on Sunday said that there are 18 such legendary players who have brought laurels to Punjab at the global level but since Maharaja Ranjit Singh Awards were instituted in 1978 only, these star players were devoid of the honour the reason being their achievements dating to the pre-1978 period.
He said that the Chief Minister accorded immense respect to the sports and the sportspersons and that is exactly why he has amended the sports policy in order to give awards to the veteran sports stars. “These players are pride of the state as well as the entire country, so, it is our duty to felicitate them,” he said.
Sodhi said that the Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh would honour total 99 players including these 18 veteran sports legends on July 9 in Chandigarh with the prestigious award.
Giving more details, the Sports Minister said that besides above 18 veteran legends, the Punjab Government would also felicitate 81 other players from Punjab with the Maharaja Ranjit Singh Award who have rendered exceptional performances at the national and international level in sporting arena from the year 2011-2018.
“These also comprise of those players who have won Arjuna Award during these years,” he said adding that the players to be awarded include 15 for achievements in 2011 like Rajpal Singh, Rajinder Singh Rahelu, Heena Sidhu, among others, 14 players for achievements in 2012 including Navpreet Kaur, Sunita Rani, Gurinder Singh, five players for achievements in 2013 including Mandeep Kaur, Amandeep Kaur, Sapna Dutta, five players for achievements in 2014 including Davinder Singh, Gurbaaz Singh, Jasmine, among others.
Similarly, 10 players would get the award for achievements during 2015, 15 for achievements during 2016, seven players for achievements during 2017, and 10 players for achievements in 2018.