Veteran Bengali actor Soumitra Chatterjee has been selected for France?s highest civilian award ?Legion of Honour? for his outstanding contribution to cinema and theatre. With this, Chatterjee has become the first Bengali actor to be chosen for the award. The honour comes almost 3 decades after the same recognition was conferred on master director Satyajit Ray in 1987. Chatterjee has acted in several of Ray?s films including ?Apur Sansar?, ?Debi?,? Aranyer Din Ratri?, ?Ghare Bairey? and ?Ganashatru?. Earlier recipients of the Legion of Honour include sitar meastro Pandit Ravi Shankar, Amitabh Bachaan, Shahrukh Khan and Kamal Hasan. Chatterjee was awarded the Dadasaheb Phalke Award in 2012.

The Ministry of Rural Development has selected Vizianagaram as one among the 17 districts across the nation for the MGNREGA annual award for effective implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act during 2015-16. The award would be presented at the Mahatma Gandhi NREGA Sammelan to the district programme coordinator and District Collector on June 19, 2017 in New Delhi.

The Apex body for The national sport Hockey India pitched Jharkhand's Samurai Tete, former Team India skipper, for the Dhyan Chand Lifetime Achievement Award 2016.

Sumrai Tete is a member of the India women's national field hockey team. She played with the team when it won the Gold at the Manchester 2002 Commonwealth Games.