Record 11 Ashok Chakra awards this yr

President Pratibha Patil finally approved an unprecedented 11 people for the country’s highest peacetime gallantry award, Ashok Chakra, on Thursday evening.

The number is unprecedented in Independent India’s history. Even during war, India has not awarded its highest gallantry award — Param Vir Chakra — to so many people in a single operation.

As reported by DNA (Jan 22), the initial list of nine was revised after controversy surrounding the names. The new list raises doubts on whether political expedience got the better of scientific analysis.

The Mumbai anti-terrorist operation has got six Ashok Chakra winners — probably for the first time after Independence for a single operation.

Since Independence, about 40 Ashok Chakras have been awarded for exemplary acts of bravery during peacetime.  Its war time equivalent, Param Vir Chakra, was also awarded sparingly —  five for the Kashmir operations of 1947-48, four each for the 1971 war and 1999 Kargil conflict.

Posthumous awardees for 26/11 are Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan and Havildar Gajendra Singh, and from the Mumbai police Hemant Karkare, Ashok Kamte, Vijay Salaskar and Tukaram Omble.

Others include inspector MC Sharma, who led Delhi’s Okhla area against alleged terrorists, havildar Bahadur Dohra, colonel Jojan Thomas, Orissa Special Operations Group assistant commandant Pramod Satpathy and Meghalaya’s DSP Raymond P
Diengdoh.