By IANS
New Delhi : Steel tycoon Lakshmi Narayan Mittal, Infosys mentor N.R. Narayana Murthy and Tata boss Ratan Naval Tata lead the 10 names from trade and industry in the Padma awards list announced here Friday on the eve of Republic Day.
Steel tycoon Mittal, who acquired European steel giant Arcelor last year, has won the Padma Vibhushan. Others in the category are Narayana Murthy, hotelier P.R.S. Oberoi and Tata, who launched the Rs.100,000 car Nano this year.
The Padma Bhushan category includes five from the field of trade and industry. Suresh Kumar Neotia of Gujarat Ambhuja Cement Limited has been named for social work, along with trade and industry.
Baba Neelkanth Kalyani, an MIT-trained engineer who owns Bharat Forge Ltd, ICICI group head K.V. Kamath, HCL head Shiv Nadar and Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit are the others to have been named for the Padma Bhushan.
Kalyani is one of the top names in the forging industry of the world with factories in several countries. Kamath is credited with making ICICI a big name in the banking sector in the last decade.
Shiv Nadar heads the HCL group and is credited with starting NIIT, the computer education centre that made several youngsters computer literate in the last decade and a half.
Vikram Pandit, a former Morgan Stanley executive, became CEO of Citigroup in December 2007.
Amit Mitra, an economist and secretary general of FICCI (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry) is the only person to be named for a Padma Shri in the trade and industry category this year.