Renowned tabla player Pandit Anindo Chatterjee refused to accept the Padma Shri award

Alleging to have announced it late

Editorial comment

If dignitaries are not honoured at the appropriate time, it is an insult. For the last many decades, many have refused the Padma award in the country for not being given at the appropriate time. We need to be more sensitive about it.

New Delhi – Renowned tabla player Pandit Anindo Chatterjee has refused to accept the Padma Shri award. Pandit Anindo Chatterjee said that he had received a phone call from Delhi on 25th January to accept the award. However he politely had declined the award saying, ‘Thank you’ for that award, I am at that stage of my career I am not ready to accept that award. I have passed the stage of accepting the award. If I were to get that award 10 years ago, then he would have accepted it with great pleasure. My colleagues and even juniors had received that award many years ago. While apologising he conveyed that he could not accept that award.

Pandit Anindo Chatterjee, tabla player, has declined to accept the Padma Shri award. “Many of my contemporaries and juniors received the Padma Shri award many years ago. Anyway, I apologised and said, “I’m sorry, but I can’t accept it (the award) right now.” “He stated this. pic.twitter.com/3AOthnZzzE

— India Updates (@theindiaupdate) January 26, 2022

90-year-old famous singer Sandhya Mukherjee had also refused to accept the award

Famous singer Sandhya Mukherjee also has refused to accept the Padma Shri award. Sandhya Mukherjee’s daughter said that after mesmerising the audience for almost eight decades, at the age of 90, she deserves a bigger honour.”

Meanwhile, three persons from Bengal have refused to accept the Padma award. Before Chatterjee and Mukherjee, former Bengal Chief Minister and CPI (M) leader Buddhadeb Bhattacharya had refused to accept the Padma Bhushan award.