Tennis star Leander Paes and badminton player-turned-coach Pullela Gopichand were selected for the prestigious Padma Bhushan awards while cricketer Yuvraj Singh was among the seven sportspersons chosen for this year's Padma Shri award.
'The year in pictures' treks across the globe, looking back on the moments that shaped 2016. From the United States presidential race, to demonetisation in India to the refugee crisis, the news has kept pouring in. Here are our top 50 moments from the world.
You'll see that there's more to the state than just its forts and havelis!
They broke free yet failed to evade the clutches of law.
A group of concerned individuals as the India Pride Project and the support of one man dubbed America's Indiana Jones has resulted in the return of India's heritage back to the country, says Vijay Kumar.
A Swiss national who has run soccer's powerful governing body for the past 17 years, 79-year-old FIFA boss Sepp Blatter has now for the first time become the focus of a criminal investigation.
The plan of UID/Aadhaar-based surveillance does not end with the collection of fingerprints and iris scan, it goes quite beyond it and poses a lethal threat to the idea of India, says Gopal Krishna.
Australian model Ilana Davies gets candid with Rediff.com's Tista Sengupta.
An AirAsia flight from Indonesia to Singapore with 162 people aboard reportedly went missing on Sunday morning after losing contact with air traffic controllers.
Real Madrid midfielder Luka Modric is set to miss the rest of the year with a thigh injury, the La Liga leaders said in a statement on Monday.
Rajeev Srinivasan on the disastrous after-effects of a made-up spying incident
'In her insecurity, she destroyed the institutions of democracy.' 'She packed Parliament with her supporters with loyalty being more important than ability; she superseded judges; she corrupted the civil service.' 'She knew how to use people against each other and was quite a master of that.' 'She would do this with calculated skill and in the bargain cause enmity between brothers, split up families.'
'Even apart from the Bengal famine, there was a great deal more bloodshed and deceit than I was prepared for.' 'Almost every one of the acquisitions was won by extreme extortionate methods and what came out was that these relatively honest officers found themselves doing very dishonest things.'
Roberto Firmino's goal gave Brazil a 1-0 victory over Chile in a feisty friendly at the Emirates Stadium in London on Sunday, their eighth successive win since last year's disappointing World Cup campaign.
'In today's India very few would, of course, stand Basavanna's test. This led Professor Kalburgi to not only take on casteist and conservative forces in general, but also some powerful conservatives among Lingayats.' 'Conservatives found him polarising and some researchers disagreed with his speculations while admiring his scholarship, but he posited that culture studies and historians have to perforce join the dots, speculate, interpret, interpolate, extrapolate and take leaps to make progress even if some of them later turn out to be wrong.' Shivanand Kanavi salutes Professor M M Kalburgi, the scholar who was assassinated in Dharwad on Sunday, August 30.
'If you destroy the assets in Pathankot, you degrade the combat potential of India; you degrade the war potential of India.'
'I don't know how they dared to send Krrish for a National Award. It was a horrible film! Films like Dabangg and Bang Bang are trash films. Goliyon Ki Rasleela: Ram Leela was so bad; only the music was good. Straight talk from Garm Hava director M S Sathyu.
'Smita had it all planned out. She was pregnant then and planning to leave Raj Babbar after the baby was born. In an enthralling new book Smita Patil, A Brief Incandescence (HarperCollins), Maithili Rao reveals the many fascinating facets of the incomparable actress whom we lost too young.
Launching a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Opposition parties on Wednesday alleged that selective leak of information on demonetisation of 500 and 1000 rupee notes to 'friends of BJP' and demanded making public the names of those who had bought gold and foreign exchange of over Rs 1 crore since April.
'In her insecurity, she destroyed the institutions of democracy,' says Khushwant Singh.