"He does not only have competitiveness but ability, regardless of the circumstance he faced, to never quit."
Most newly, our highly-principled Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi Ji retitled the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award, the country’s highest sporting honor, after hockey wizard Major Dhyan Chand.
- This announcement was declared a day after the Indian men's hockey team won the bronze medal in the ongoing Tokyo Olympics and few hours after the women's hockey team stood fourth.
Some special Amendments are:
- The Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award will now be called the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award.
- This renamed Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna award provides the awardee with a cash prize of Rs 25 lakh.
- Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award will be the highest sporting award given by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports for the spectacular and extremely outstanding performance in the field of sports by a sportsperson over a period of four years.
- The Khel Ratna award was instituted in 1991-1992 and the first recipient was Chess legend, Viswanathan Anand. At that time the other winners were Leander Paes, Sachin Tendulkar, Dhanraj Pillay, Pullela Gopichand, Abhinav Bindra, Anju Bobby George, Mary Kom, and Rani Rampal in 2020.
The Major Dhyan Chand Award, now officially acknowledged as Major Dhyan Chand Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sports and Games, is the lifetime achievement sporting honor of the Republic of India. The award is named after Dhyan Chand (1905–79), an Indian hockey player who scored more than 1000 goals during a career that spanned over 20 years from 1926 to 1948. It is awarded annually by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports. The selected