Bollywood singer Sonu Nigam and Bengali actor Victor Banerjee were conferred with Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan Awards respectively under the Arts category in 2022, in a ceremony held today, March 29. Present at the Civil Investiture Ceremony-II at Rashtrapati Bhavan, President Ram Nath Kovind presented Padma awards for the year 2022. Besides, Nigam and Banerjee, 35 other personalities including Marathi singer Sulochana Chavan, singer Madhuri Barthwal, musician Ballesh Bhajantri and filmmaker Chandraprakash Dwivedi won awards at the ceremony.
The year’s list of awards included four Padma Vibhushan, 17 Padma Bhushan and 107 Padma Shri Awards. Thirty-four of the awardees are women and the list also includes 10 persons from the category of Foreigners/NRI/PIO/OCI and 13 Posthumous awardees, as reported by IndiaTV News.
Nigam, who has sung over 6000 songs during the span of his career in more than 28 languages, has earlier, also received the National Award for his song in the film 'Kal Ho Na Ho'. At the Padma Awards, Nigam turned up in an Indo-western outfit.
In an earlier interview with Indian Express, the singer had expressed his excitement at winning the prestigious Padma award. “My heartfelt thanks to all those who selected me and suggested my name for this prestigious honour. I would also like to thank my mother, Shobha Nigam, and my father, Agam Kumar Nigam. In fact, I want to dedicate this award to my mother. Had she been here today, she would have cried a lot,” he had said.
However, he had also raised his concerns about the fact that he felt that it was too late in his career for an award like this. In fact, he had even gone on to speak about the fact that he had said that he might not even accept it, when an official had called him, informing him about the same. But since the official insisted, he told him that he would ask his father and then get back.
