New Delhi: The Union Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports on Tuesday announced the National Sports Awards 2025, with 17 sportspersons selected for the prestigious Arjuna Award. The list features prominent names from athletics, chess, badminton, hockey, shooting and other disciplines. High jumper Tejaswin Shankar, chess players Vidit Gujrathi and Divya Deshmukh, and women’s doubles badminton pair Gayatri Gopichand and Treesa Jolly are among the prominent awardees. Divya Deshmukh’s selection comes after her rapid rise in international chess, while Gayatri and Treesa have established themselves as one of India’s leading women’s doubles combinations, reaching a career-high world ranking of ninth in January 2025.
Also Read: Four from Nagaland Selected for Asian Games
The other Arjuna Award winners are Muhammad Ajmal Variyathodi, Priyanka Goswami, Narender, Dhanush Srikanth, Lalremsiami, Rajkumar Pal, Surjeet, Pooja, Rudransh Khandelwal, Ekta Bhyan, Arvind Singh and Akhil Sheoran. Former Indian footballer and coach I Arumainayagam has been selected for the Arjuna Award in the Lifetime category. He was part of India’s gold-medal-winning football team at the 1962 Asian Games.
The Dronacharya Award in the regular category will go to athletics coach Parveer Singh, boxing coach Chhote Lal Yadav and shooting coach Neha Nandkumar Chavan. The lifetime category will honour boxing coach Dharmendra Singh Yadav and wrestling coach Virender Kumar. The Rashtriya Khel Protsahan Puruskar has been awarded to the Army Paralympic Node, Pune, for its contribution to sports promotion and development. Notably, no sportsperson has been selected for the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna for 2025. According to the announcement, this is only the third time since the award’s inception that no recipient has been named.
