President Ram Nath Kovind gave away the National Sports and National Adventure Awards at a special function held at Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi, on the occasion of National Sports Day.
Para-athlete Deepa Malik was conferred with Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award. Fourteen sports persons were conferred with Arjuna Awards for the year 2019.
They include cricketer Poonam Yadav, athlete Swapna Barman, wrestler Pooja Dhanda, footballer Gurpreet Singh Sandhu, bodybuilder S. Bhaskaran, boxer Sonia Lather, kabaddi player Ajay Thakur, table tennis player Harmeet Rajul Desai and badminton player Bhamidipati Sai Praneeth.
Dronacharya Awards in the regular category were given to Sandeep Gupta in Table tennis and Vimal Kumar in badminton. Dronacharya Awards in lifetime category were given to Sanjay Bhardwaj in Cricket, Rambir Singh Khokar in Kabaddi and Merzban Patel in Hockey.
Dhyan Chand Awards were given to Manoj Kumar in Wrestling, C Lalremsanga in Archery, Arup Basak in Table Tennis, Nitten Kirrtane in Tennis and Manuel Fredricks in Hockey. President also conferred Tenzing Norgay National Adventure Awards, 2018 to six persons.
Talking to AIR News, Football player and Arjuna awardee Gurpreet Singh Sandhu expressed happiness at receiving the award.
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