President Murmu presents National Sports Awards in New Delhi; Lalremsiami first from Mizoram to receive Arjuna Award
President Droupadi Murmu presented the National Sports Awards at Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi on Friday, November 13, 2026, handing out Arjuna Awards among other honours; Lalremsiami Hmar became the first sportsperson from Mizoram to receive an Arjuna Award. The ceremony featured no Khel Ratna selection for the year.
The little-over-36-minute event was attended by Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports Mansukh Mandaviya and Sports secretary Hari Ranjan Rao, and included star Arjuna winners such as decathlete Tejaswin Shankar and Grandmasters Divya Deshmukh and Vidit Gujrathi. Seventeen athletes were named Arjuna awardees after an unprecedented re-evaluation of recommendations by a selection panel led by former Supreme Court Judge Arun Kumar Mishra late last year; the country last went without a Khel Ratna in 2014.
Lalremsiami, from Kolasib in northern Mizoram near Assam, made her national debut at the Junior Nehru Hockey Tournament in October 2011 and progressed to India’s Under-18 team for the Asian Cup in 2016. She earned her first senior national team call-up in 2017 and was part of India’s Asia Cup-winning squad that year. In 2020 she became the first Indian woman hockey player to win the International Hockey Federation’s Women’s Rising Star of the Year award, and her achievements since include a bronze at the 2022 Asian Games, Asian Champions Trophy titles in 2023 and 2024, and gold at the 2026 Asian Games.
Among the 17 Arjuna awardees named were world cup-winning chess player Divya Deshmukh, Tejaswin Shankar, and women's doubles badminton pair Gayatri Gopichand and Treesa Jolly. Those present at the Rashtrapati Bhavan ceremony included Deshmukh, Vidit Gujrathi, Glasgow Commonwealth Games silver-medallist boxer Narender Berwal (+92kg), and young deaf rifle shooter Dhanush Srikanth; the 20-year-old Deshmukh is noted in the list as the first Indian woman to win the World Cup, and Gujrathi was part of the gold-winning Indian team at the 2024 Chess Olympiad.
Tejaswin Shankar’s résumé cited at the ceremony includes a historic decathlon silver at the Asian Games in 2023, a second-place finish at the Asian Championships last year, a bronze at the Commonwealth Games earned despite a knee problem, and a bronze at the Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya; he was among athletes who criticised the delay in the announcement of the awards as disrespectful towards athletes. The list of Arjuna awardees published at the time comprised Tejaswin Shankar (Athletics), Priyanka Goswami (Athletics), Narender (Boxing), Vidit Gujrathi (Chess), Divya Deshmukh (Chess), Dhanush Srikanth (Deaf Shooting), Rajkumar Pal (Hockey), Surjeet (Kabaddi), Rudransh Khandelwal (Para-Shooting), Ekta Bhyan (Para-athletics), Arvind Singh (Rowing), Akhil Sheoran (Shooting), Treesa Jolly (Badminton), Gayatri Gopichand (Badminton), Lalremsiami (Hockey), Muhammed Ajmal (Athletics) and Pooja (Kabaddi), with Shri I Arumainayagam (Football) the sole Arjuna Award (Lifetime) recipient.
Compared with 2024’s record of 32 Arjuna awardees that included 17 para-athletes, this year’s list contained only two para-sport names: Ekta Bhyan, a 2024 para world championships gold-medallist who also won silver at the world championships held last year in Delhi, and Rudransh Khandelwal, a 2024 Para World Cup gold-medallist. The ministry’s announcement did not feature any cricketer; pacer Mohammed Shami was the last cricketer to receive the Arjuna Award in 2023.
The ministry named three Dronacharya awardees — Parveer Singh, Chhote Lal Yadav and Neha Chavan — and two lifetime coaching honourees, Dharmendra Yadav and Virender Kumar. Boxing coach Chhote Lal Yadav was highlighted among the coaching recipients for his involvement with the women's national camp and as part of the support staff of M.C. Mary Kom. The Arjuna Award carries a monetary award of ₹15 lakh, and last year the Khel Ratna was bestowed on four athletes: D Gukesh, Harmanpreet Singh, Praveen Kumar and Manu Bhaker.
The awards were announced after a ministry-initiated re-evaluation process described by the ministry as intended to "preserve the integrity of the awards," and the selection committee for this cycle included Indian Olympic Association Vice President Gagan Narang, former badminton player Aparna Popat and former hockey player M.M. Somaya.
