Paralympic silver-medallist Deepa Malik on Thursday became the first Indian woman para-athlete and the oldest to be conferred the Khel Ratna award during the National Sports Day ceremony at the Rashtrapati Bhawan in New Delhi on Thursday.

Malik, who won a silver medal in the shot put F53 category in the 2016 Rio Paralympics, was joint winner of the country’s top sporting honour with Asian and Commonwealth Games champion Bajrang Punia, who is in Russia to prepare for the upcoming World Championships in Kazakhstan and missed the event.

Malik became only the second para athlete after double Paralympic gold-medallist javelin thrower Devendra Jhajharia (who received the recognition in 2017) to have won the prestigious award.

At 49, she also became the oldest athlete ever to have claimed the honour.

“I am very happy. This whole journey has been more about changing the attitude of people towards disability and the hidden potential in people with disability,” Malik said.

“I think the award is going to be a huge inspiration to women athletes in disability. It took 70 years for independent India to win medal in Paralympic,” she added.

While the Khel Ratna award carries a prize purse of Rs 7.5 lakh, the Arjuna awardees are given Rs 5 lakh each along with citations.

The national sports awards are given on August 29 every year to commemorate the birth anniversary of hockey legend Major Dhyan Chand.

Besides the Khel Ratna and Arjuna awards, the President also gave away Dronacharya and Dhyan Chand awards to coaches, the Tenzing Norgay National Adventure awards, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Trophy and Rashtriya Khel Protsahan Puraskar.

List of awardees:

Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award: Deepa Malik (para-athletics), Bajrang Punia (wrestling)

Arjuna Awards: Ravindra Jadeja (cricket), Mohammed Anas Yahiya (athletics), Gurpreet Singh Sandhu (football), Sonia Lather (boxing), Chinglensana Singh Kangujam (hockey), S Bhaskaran (bodybuilding), Ajay Thakur (kabaddi), Anjum Moudgil (shooting), B Sai Praneeth (badminton), Tajinder Pal Singh Toor (athletics), Pramod Bhagat (para sports-badminton), Harmeet Rajul Desai (table tennis), Pooja Dhanda (wrestling), Fouaad Mirza (equestrian), Simran Singh Shergill (polo), Poonam Yadav (cricket), Swapna Burman (athletics), Sundar Singh Gurjar (para sports-athletics) and Gaurav Singh Gill (motorsports).

Dronacharya Award (regular category): Mohinder Singh Dhillon (athletics), Sandeep Gupta (table tennis) and Vimal Kumar (badminton).

Dronacharya Award (lifetime category): Sanjay Bhardwaj (cricket), Rambir Singh Khokar (kabaddi) and Mezban Patel (hockey).

Dhyan Chand Award: Manoj Kumar (wrestling), C Lalremsanga (archery), Arup Basak (table tennis), Nitten Kirrtane (tennis) and Manuel Fredricks (hockey).

With PTI inputs