Megastar Chiranjeevi, former Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu conferred Padma Vibhushan

HYDERABAD: Megastar Chiranjeevi and former Vice-President of India M Venkaiah Naidu have been conferred the second highest civilian honour Padma Vibhushan or the year 2024.

The President of India approved conferment of 132 Padma Awards. The list comprises five Padma Vibhushan, 17 Padma Bhushan and 110 Padma Shri Awards. 30 of the awardees are women and the list also includes 8 persons from the category of Foreigners / NRI / PIO / OCI and 9 Posthumous awardees.

Venkaiah Naidu was born on July 1, 1949 and served as the Vice-President of India between 2017 and 2022. He was also the Union Minister for Housing, Urban Development; Information and Broadcasting in the Narendra Modi Government before his elevation to the second highest office in India.

Between 2002 and 2005, he served as the national president of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

He served as Minister for Rural Development in Atal Bihari Vajpayee Cabinet between 2000 and 2002.

He was a Rajya Sabha member for 19 years from 1998 to 2017 before he became the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha.

Also Read: Chiranjeevi And Ram Charan Land In Ayodhya!

He was elected to the Andhra Pradesh Assembly twice between 1978-1985.

Megastar Chiranjeevi, a superstar of the Telugu tinsel town, is also a self made man and carved a niche for himself in the filmdom.

In a career spanning over four decades, he acted in over 150 movies predominantly in Telugu. He had also acted in Tamil, Hindi and Kannada.

Chiranjeevi won the Andhra Pradesh state's highest film award, the Raghupathi Venkaiah Award, three Nandi Awards, and nine Filmfare Awards South including the Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2006, he was honoured with the Padma Bhushan, India's third-highest civilian award, for his contributions to Indian cinema.

He had floated a political party by name Praja Rajyam and was elected to the Andhra Pradesh Assembly in 2009 from Tirupati. He was elected to the Rajya Sabha in 2012 after merging his party with the Congress and was made the Minister of State for Tourism and Culture with Independent charge.

Later, he took a retirement from politics.