The Param Vir Chakra, Instituted on 26 January 1950 and Designed by Savitri Khanolkar on the Thunderbolt of the Sage Dadhichi, Has Been Awarded to 21 Servicemen for Actions Between 1947 and 1999

The Param Vir Chakra is India’s highest wartime gallantry award, and 21 men have received it. The Press Information Bureau (PIB), the central government’s information service, counts 14 of the 21 as posthumous awards. The list begins with Major Somnath Sharma, who defended Badgam in Kashmir in November 1947, and its latest actions are those of four soldiers in the Kargil war in July 1999.

The medal was instituted on 26 January 1950, the day India became a republic. It is made of bronze, it carries four copies of Indra’s vajra, and a woman born in Switzerland designed it.

A medal made after its first winners had earned it

PIB’s December 2025 feature says the Government of India instituted the Param Vir Chakra on 26 January 1950. Accounts of the institution, including one in The Global Indian, say it took effect retrospectively from 15 August 1947, the day of independence, together with the Maha Vir Chakra and the Vir Chakra. That is how an action of November 1947 could be honoured with a medal that did not yet exist.

Ajai Shukla, writing in Business Standard in 2013, names five men honoured retrospectively on the day of institution, all for the Kashmir war of 1947 and 1948: Major Somnath Sharma, Lance Naik Karam Singh, Second Lieutenant Rama Raghoba Rane, Naik Jadunath Singh and Company Havildar Major Piru Singh. In Shukla’s account, Sharma led a hundred men of 4 Kumaon in a last stand near Srinagar airfield on 3 November 1947, against about 700 raiders.

Who can receive it

The regulations, as summarised on GlobalSecurity.org, set the test as “most conspicuous bravery or some daring or pre-eminent act of valour or self sacrifice, in the presence of the enemy”. The act can be on land, at sea or in the air, and the award can be made after death.

Officers and other ranks of the Army, Navy and Air Force qualify, as do men and women of the reserve forces and the Territorial Army. So do nursing staff and civilians who serve regularly or temporarily under the orders of those forces. In practice, all 21 recipients are men: 20 served in the Army, and the other, Flying Officer Nirmal Jit Singh Sekhon, in the Air Force.

The Swiss-born woman who drew it

Shukla describes the designer as a Hungarian-Russian woman born Yvonne Maday de Maros in Neuchâtel, Switzerland. The Global Indian gives her full name as Eve Yvonne Maday de Maros. In 1932, at 19 by Shukla’s count, she went to India to marry an army officer, Vikram Khanolkar, took the name Savitri Bai, and studied Hindu scripture and Sanskrit.

Soon after independence, Major General Hira Lal Atal, the army’s Adjutant General, asked her to design the medal. The Global Indian says he turned to her for her knowledge of Indian culture, Sanskrit and the Vedas.

She built the design on the story of Dadhichi, a Vedic sage. In the account Shukla gives, the gods asked Dadhichi for help against the demon Vritra, and he gave up his body so that a vajra, a thunderbolt, could be made from his bones. Indra killed Vritra with it. The four vajras on the medal recall that sacrifice, Shukla writes. Retellings differ on which bone it was. Shukla says the thighbone, and The Global Indian says the spine.

The first recipient was related to the designer. Shukla calls Sharma the brother-in-law of Khanolkar’s daughter, and The Global Indian says the same of her elder daughter.

One popular detail is disputed. The Global Indian says she added the sword of Shivaji beside the vajras. The description of the medal on GlobalSecurity.org lists only the four vajras and the state emblem.

Bronze, four vajras and a purple ribbon

The medal is circular, made of bronze, and one and three-eighths inches across. On the front, four replicas of Indra’s vajra surround the state emblem, which is embossed in the centre. On the back, the words “Param Vir Chakra” appear in Hindi and English with two lotus flowers between them. It hangs from a swivel fitting on a plain purple ribbon. A second act of equal bravery earns a bar on the ribbon, and each bar adds a miniature vajra when the ribbon is worn alone. PIB renders the name of the award as the “Wheel of the Ultimate Brave”.

The 21, in the order the government lists them

PIB published the names on 21 January 2023, ahead of the naming of 21 Andaman and Nicobar islands after the recipients. The order below is PIB’s. Ranks are those held at the time of the action, and units and actions come from the PIB features and the sources at the foot of the page.

PIB’s 2023 list gives Pandey’s rank as Lieutenant, and its 2025 Kargil note calls him Captain. The same PIB list names Thapa as Lieutenant Colonel (then Major), which is the rank he reached later. Karam Singh’s date comes from PIB’s own magazine, the New India Samachar.

Counted by conflict, five awards are for 1947 and 1948, one for the Congo in 1961, three for 1962, two for 1965, four for 1971, two for 1987 and four for Kargil in 1999. Two of those, Salaria’s in the Congo and Parameswaran’s in Sri Lanka, came from operations away from the borders with Pakistan and China.

Several of these actions have longer accounts on tuput. The only Air Force entry is told in Flying Officer Sekhon’s defence of Srinagar. The same goes for Charlie Company at Rezang La, Hamid at Khem Karan and the Basantar bridgehead of 1971, where Khetarpal and Hoshiar Singh fought. Bana Singh’s assault is part of the Operation Meghdoot story, and Batra’s battles are in the piece on Shershaah and Vikram Batra.

What the award carries

Recipients receive a monthly allowance from the government. A defence ministry notification reported by the Press Trust of India on 6 December 2017 doubled the Param Vir Chakra honorarium to Rs 20,000 from Rs 10,000, effective 1 August 2017. We found no later central revision in the sources we checked.

On 23 January 2023, Parakram Diwas, the 21 largest unnamed islands of the Andaman and Nicobar group were named after the recipients, the largest for the first awardee, the second largest for the second, and so on. PIB’s report of the ceremony at Port Blair says the Home Minister honoured family members of Yogendra Singh Yadav, Sanjay Kumar, Bana Singh and other recipients.

On 16 December 2025, Vijay Diwas, the President inaugurated the Param Vir Dirgha, a corridor at Rashtrapati Bhavan. PIB says portraits of all 21 recipients now hang where portraits of British aides-de-camp once did.