New Delhi: India's highest sporting honour will go unawarded for 2025, marking only the third time in the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna's 34-year history that no athlete has been deemed worthy of the prestigious recognition, according to sources familiar with the selection committee's deliberations.

The selection panel that convened in New Delhi on Wednesday chose to recommend 24 athletes for the Arjuna Award but reached a consensus not to confer the Khel Ratna to anyone this year. The decision follows previous instances in 2008 and 2014 when the award was similarly withheld.

Controversial Deliberations and Leak Drama

The committee meeting was marred by controversy after names of potential winners were leaked to the media before deliberations concluded, sparking an intense uproar during the session, according to NDTV. Among those discussed were Indian men's hockey team vice-captain Hardik Singh, who played in both bronze medal-winning Olympic campaigns in Tokyo and Paris, as well as women's cricket World Cup-winning captains Harmanpreet Kaur and Smriti Mandhana.

Compound archer Jyothi Surekha Vennam, a world champion and Asia's top-ranked archer who has reportedly logged the highest points among Khel Ratna applicants for the past three years, was overlooked partly because compound archery was not part of the Olympics until the 2024 Paris Games. The cricketers were not considered due to the absence of nominations from the Board of Control for Cricket in India and the lack of a specific points system to assess their performance.

Historic Recognition for Yogasana

While the Khel Ratna remained elusive, the committee made history by recommending yogasana athlete Aarti Pal for the Arjuna Award, marking the first time the discipline has been recognised since gaining formal approval from the Sports Ministry five years ago. Aarti, the reigning national and Asian champion, competes in a sport that will be featured as a demonstration event at the 2026 Asian Games.

Other notable Arjuna Award recommendations include 19-year-old chess prodigy Divya Deshmukh, the first Indian woman to win the FIDE World Cup, fellow chess player Vidit Gujrathi, and decathlete Tejaswin Shankar, who won silver at the 2023 Asian Games. The badminton duo of Treesa Jolly and Gayatri Gopichand, daughter of national coach Pullela Gopichand, also made the list.

Notably, no cricketer has been shortlisted for the National Sports Awards for the second consecutive year, with Mohammed Shami remaining the last player from the sport to receive the Arjuna Award in 2023. The recommendations will now be sent to Sports Minister Mansukh Mandaviya for final approval before President Droupadi Murmu confers the awards.