Uttar Pradesh Laxman Award and Rani Laxmi Bai Award

What are the Laxman Award and the Rani Laxmi Bai Award?

Laxman Award and Rani Laxmi Bai Award are the highest sports honours conferred by the Department of Sports (Khel Vibhag) of the Government of Uttar Pradesh. Both are the same award under two names: male sportspersons receive the Laxman Award and women sportspersons receive the Rani Laxmi Bai Award.

Each award carries:

• A cash prize of Rs 3,11,000
• A bronze statue of Laxman or of Rani Laxmi Bai
• A citation scroll signed by the state government

The awards are conferred at a state function, usually alongside the department's other sports honours, and they are given once in a lifetime to any individual. An athlete who wins the award as a junior international cannot win it again after an Olympic performance later in their career.

The names are drawn from two figures the state associates with strength and courage: Laxman, and the Rani of Jhansi, Rani Laxmi Bai. Readers searching in Hindi will find the scheme written as लक्ष्मण पुरस्कार and रानी लक्ष्मीबाई पुरस्कार.

Who is eligible for the Laxman and Rani Laxmi Bai Award?

A sportsperson can be considered if:

• They are a bona fide resident of Uttar Pradesh, with a domicile certificate to prove it.
• They have been a member of a state or national sports team for at least three consecutive years.
• They have participated in a national or international competition and won a medal in the qualifying period.
• Their achievement is in a discipline and a competition recognised by the relevant national federation and by the Department of Sports.
• They have not previously received the Laxman or Rani Laxmi Bai Award.

Sportspersons who have represented, or are selected to represent, India at events such as the Olympic Games, the Commonwealth Games and the SAF Games are within the scope of consideration.

A sportsperson is not eligible if:

• They are not domiciled in Uttar Pradesh, even if they train or compete in the state.
• They have no medal from a recognised national or international competition; participation alone does not qualify.
• They already hold the same award, because it is a once-in-a-lifetime honour.
• Their achievement is in a competition or federation not recognised by the national body for that sport. Unrecognised open tournaments and private leagues are the commonest reason nominations are set aside.

A living athlete is the normal recipient, but the award can be conferred posthumously, with the cash prize and citation going to the family.

What are the three award categories?

The Department of Sports gives the award in three categories:

1. General: athletes competing in open competition.
2. Veteran: older sportspersons, judged on their achievements in veteran or masters competition rather than against open-category athletes.
3. Disability — para athletes, whose medals in recognised para competitions are assessed on their own terms.

Splitting the award this way matters in practice. A veteran national medallist and a para national medallist are not competing for the same slot as a serving open-category international, so a strong record in either stream is not crowded out.

What documents are required?

Achievement certificates are the part of the file that decides the outcome. Certificates should be issued by the state or national federation for the sport, should name the competition, the year and the position, and should be attested where the department asks for attestation. Photocopies of newspaper clippings do not substitute for a federation certificate.

How to apply for the Laxman or Rani Laxmi Bai Award

1. Watch for the Department of Sports notice inviting nominations for the award year. The department publishes it on upsports.gov.in and circulates it to District Sports Officers and to the state sports associations. There is no permanently open window.
2. Collect the prescribed application or nomination form from the District Sports Officer of your district, or download it from upsports.gov.in when the notice is live.
3. Fill the form with your full competitive record for the qualifying period: competition name, level, year, event and position, and state clearly which of the three categories (general, veteran, disability) you are applying in.
4. Attach attested copies of the achievement certificates, domicile certificate, Aadhaar, age proof, bank passbook, and the disability certificate where applicable.
5. Submit the completed nomination to the District Sports Officer or to the Directorate of Sports, Uttar Pradesh, Lucknow, as the notice specifies, and keep the acknowledgement.
6. Respond promptly if the department's selection committee asks for clarification or for original certificates for verification.

Nominations can also be routed through a recognised state sports association, which is the usual path for athletes in federation-governed disciplines.

How is the winner selected?

Selection is made by a committee constituted by the Department of Sports, which scrutinises the nominations against the eligibility conditions, verifies the achievement certificates with the concerned federation, and recommends names to the state government. The final conferment is announced by the government and the awards are presented at a state ceremony.

Because the award is capped in number each year and is once-in-a-lifetime, the committee weighs the level of the competition and the colour of the medal heavily. An international medal outranks a national medal, and a national medal outranks a state-level placing.

Why nominations get rejected

• Domicile not established. An athlete born elsewhere who now lives in Uttar Pradesh must produce a proper domicile certificate, not a rent agreement or a voter card alone.
• Achievement in an unrecognised competition. Only competitions recognised by the national federation count.
• No medal. Participation certificates alone do not meet the condition.
• Certificates not attested or not verifiable with the issuing federation.
• Prior receipt of the award, which is a complete bar.
• Nomination filed after the notice window closed. Late nominations are not carried to the next year.

Where to get help

• Directorate of Sports, Uttar Pradesh, Lucknow, which administers the award.
• District Sports Officer of your district, who is the first point of contact for the form, the notice dates and the submission.
• upsports.gov.in, the official website of the Uttar Pradesh Department of Sports, which carries the award notices and forms.
• Jansunwai portal at jansunwai.up.nic.in, for a formal grievance if a properly filed nomination is not processed.

Uttar Pradesh does not charge any fee for a Laxman or Rani Laxmi Bai Award nomination. No agent can secure the award, and any demand for money in exchange for a recommendation should be reported.

How to check your application status

The Laxman Award and Rani Laxmi Bai Award are conferred through a nomination and scrutiny process, not an online application with a tracking dashboard, so there is no case-ID login where an applicant can watch a status bar move. Even so, an athlete who has filed a nomination has a few real ways to find out where it stands.

1. Keep the acknowledgement from submission. Whether the nomination went through the District Sports Officer or directly to the Directorate of Sports, Lucknow, the receipt or acknowledgement given at submission is the only proof the file was received, and it is what the department will ask for if you follow up.
2. Contact the District Sports Officer first. Since nominations are routed through the district office, the District Sports Officer is best placed to confirm whether your file was forwarded to the Directorate of Sports and whether the selection committee has asked for anything further.
3. Check upsports.gov.in for announcements. The Department of Sports publishes the shortlist and the final list of awardees for the year on its official website, upsports.gov.in, once the selection committee has completed scrutiny and the state government has approved the names. This is the most reliable way to know the outcome, since there is no individual status lookup.
4. Follow up with the Directorate of Sports, Lucknow, if the notice period has closed and no announcement has followed. A nomination that was accepted for scrutiny but is neither in the shortlist nor rejected outright may still be under verification with the concerned sports federation, which can take time when a federation is slow to confirm a medal record.
5. Use the Jansunwai portal (jansunwai.up.nic.in) as a last resort. If a nomination was properly filed within the notice window and acknowledged, but there has been no response at all for an unreasonable period, a grievance on the state's Jansunwai portal is the formal escalation route, since the award itself has no separate helpline number.

Because the award is announced once a year as a list rather than processed as individual applications, silence during the scrutiny period is normal and does not by itself mean a nomination was rejected.