Bengaluru, Jan 25 (IANS): Renowned cardiologist, professional educator and author Dr Belle Monappa (BM) Hegde has been conferred with the Padma Vibhushan, India's second-highest civilian award.

Dr Hegde was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 2010 and was the recipient of the prestigious Dr B C Roy award in 1999. He has authored several books on medical practice and ethics.

Hegde will be conferred Padma Vibushan for his work in the area medicine, India's second-highest civilian award while Jnanapeeta awardee Chandrashekhara Kambara was bestowed Padma Bhushan for his contributions to Kannada literature.

Whereas folk artist Manjamamma Jogati, para-sportsman K. Y. Venkatesh and Indian Applied Mathematics professor Rangasami L. Kashyap was selected from Karnataka to receive the Padma Shri awards this year.

The Padma Vibhushan is awarded for exceptional and distinguished personalities, the Padma Bhushan for distinguished service of high order. The Padma Shri is awarded for distinguished service in any field.

Though announced on January 25 every year, the awards are given to the recipients usually around March or April every year, in a ceremonial event at the Rashtrapati Bhavan.

Kambara is a popular Kannada poet, playwright and film director told IANS that this award is for Mother Kannada Saraswathi and not me.

"I humbly accept this award on behalf of Mother Saraswati and Mother Kananda. It is Kannada which got me here. It gave me name fame and awards like Jnanapeeta award and now Padmabhushana. Each nation, state, region has its own identity and language. We must strive hard to flourish and serve best to our mother tongue. Our language is our identity. We must not forget that," Kambar contemporary of late playwright Girish Karnad said.

Sixty-four-year-old Jogati Manjamma, the first transwoman who was appointed as chairperson of Karnataka Janapada Academy has been awarded the Padma Shri.

A 48-year-old, K.Y. Venkatesh para-sportsman who did not let his disability come in the way of his dream to make a mark in the field of sports. Venkatesh has achondroplasia, a condition that leads to dwarfism.

Venkatesh has his name in the Limca Book of Records for winning the highest number of medals in the World Dwarf Games, 2005.

Venkatesh has stopped playing after 2012, he is contributing largely to the administration, development, and promotion of different sports among people with disabilities. As of now he is working as the secretary of the Karnataka Para Badminton Association for the Disabled that conducts national badminton tournaments every year.

Eighty-two-year Rangasami L. Kashyap is currently a professor emeritus at Purdue University in the US as well as director of the Sri Aurobindo Kapali Sastry Institute of Vedic Culture.

He developed along with with Harvard professor Yu-Chi Ho the Ho-Kashyap rule, an important result (algorithm) in pattern recognition.

He is a recipient of the King-Sun Fu award (1990) for fundamental contributors to pattern recognition for machine learning and has also been awarded the JC Bose Award for the best paper at the National Electronics Conference in the following year.

He has also authored translations of all the four Vedas, and also numerous books exploring and discussing the hidden meanings behind the Vedic Mantras of all the four Vedas.