Pacer Mohammed Shami has been nominated for this year’s Arjuna Award, while the men’s doubles badminton pair of Satwik Sairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty were nominated for the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award.
As per the Ministry’s sources, a special request was made by the BCCI to the sports ministry to include Shami’s name as he originally didn’t figure in the list.
The nominees:
Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award: Satwik Sairaj Rankireddy and Chirag Shetty (badminton).
Arjuna Award: Mohammed Shami (cricket), Ajay Reddy (blind cricket) Ojas Pravin Deotale, Aditi Gopichand Swami (archery), Sheetal Devi (para archery), Parul Chaudhary and M. Sreeshankar (athletics), Mohd Hussamuddin (boxing), R. Vaishali (chess), Divyakriti Singh and Anush Agarwalla (equestrian), Diksha Dagar (golf), Krishan Bahadur Pathak and Sushila Chanu (hockey), Pinky (lawn ball), Aishwary Pratap Singh Tomar (shooting), Antim Panghal (wrestling) and Ayhika Mukherjee (table tennis).
Dhyan Chand Lifetime Award: Kavita (kabaddi), Manjusha Kanwar (badminton) and Vineet Kumar Sharma (hockey).
Dronacharya Award: Ganesh Prabhakaran (mallakhamb), Mahavir Saini (para athletics), Lalit Kumar (wrestling), R.B. Ramesh (chess) and Shivendra Singh (hockey).
