Nagpur: Chess Grandmaster Sankalp Gupta, ace shuttler Malvika Bansod, swimmer Rutuja Talegaonkar, skaters Kasturi Tamhankar and Aditi Dhande, along with Darshana Pandit (Jijamata award) were awarded with Shiv Chhatrapati awards on Monday.
In the coaches category, Darshana was rewarded for her contribution in softball. The awards function was held at Pune on Monday. The awards were given by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde. Shinde announced that Maharashtra’s Olympic bronze medalist Malla Khashaba Jadhav’s birthday (January 15), will be celebrated as State Sports Day.
Gold Rate
Tuesday 04 Feb. 2025
The Maharashtra Government presented the awards for the year 2019-20, 2020-21 and 21-22. In 2021, Sankalp Gupta became India’s 71st Grandmaster. He took 895 days to become IM and 24 days to become GM. He secured the first IM norm in 2017 and became GM in 2019. No other GM from India has earned the title in such a short time. He became Nagpur’s second and Maharashtra’s 10th GM.
Malvika, who broke into the women’s singles world top 100 got the award for the year 2021-22. She won a silver medal at the Syed Modi International 2022 tournament. She represented India in the Sudirman Cup and the Uber Cup in 2021. She also became India No 1 in women’s singles in BAI ranking in 2022. Rutuja had taken the pool by fire. With more than 200 medals to her credit, was rewarded for 2020-21. She won record six medals including three golds in Inter-University Swimming Championship at Jalandhar in 2019. She represented India in the World Junior Championship at Israel in 2019 and in Asian Open Water Championship in 2019.
International skater Kasturi has represented India in 2021 at Colombia. In the 2021 nationals she won one gold, one silver and one bronze. This year she won a gold, two silver and one bronze in the nationals. She participated in national tournaments nine times and won nine golds, 12 silver and nine bronze medals.
Aditi had excellent performance in events organised by Roller Skating Federation of India and School Games Federation of India. She has 4 golds, 4 bronze and one silver at National level and 15 gold and 2 bronze at State-level meets. In School Games Nationals, Aditi has 4 golds, 2 silver and 1 bronze.
