Bharat Ratna conferred to Bhimsen Joshi

Eminent exponent of Hindustani classical music Pandit Bhimsen Joshi was officially conferred the "Bharat Ratna' on 10th February, 2009 at his residence in Pune by a President's emissary.

Following is the list of Bharat Ratna awardees since its institution in 1954:

1) Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1954)
2) Chakravarti Rajagopalachari (1954)
3) C V Raman (1954)
4) Bhagwan Das (1955)
5) Mokshagundam Visvesvarayya (1955)
6) Jawaharlal Nehru (1955)
7) Govind Ballabh Pant (1957)
8) Dhondo Keshav Karve (1958)
9) Dr B C Roy (1961)
10) Purushottam Das Tandon (1961)
11) Dr Rajendra Prasad (1962)
12) Dr Zakir Hussain (1963)
13) Pandurang Vaman Kane (1963)
14) Lal Bahadur Shastri (1966)
15) Indira Gandhi (1971)
16) V V Giri (1975)
17) K Kamaraj (1976)
18) Mother Teresa (1980)
19) Acharya Vinoba Bhave (1983)
20) Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1987)
21) M G Ramachandran (1988)
22) B R Ambedkar (1990)
23) Nelson Mandela (1990)
24) Rajiv Gandhi (1991)
25) Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (1991)
26) Morarji Desai (1991)
27) Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (1992)
28) J R D Tata (1992)
29) Satyajit Ray (1992)
30) A P J Abdul Kalam (1997)
31) Gulzarilal Nanda (1997)
32) Aruna Asaf Ali (1997)
33) M S Subbulakshmi (1998)
34) Chidambaram Subramaniam (1998)
35) Jayaprakash Narayan (1998)
36) Pandit Ravi Shankar (1999)
37) Amartya Sen (1999)
38) Gopinath Bordoloi (1999)
39) Lata Mangeshkar (2001)
40) Ustad Bismillah Khan (2001)
41) Pandit Bhimsen Joshi (2008)