The first successful Badminton players to win the award was N.M. Natekar who won it in 1961 and Ms. Meena Shah followed him to win it in the very next year in 1962. Other winners are Dinesh Khanna, Suresh Goel, Dipu Ghosh, D. V. Tambay, S. Moorthy, Prakash Padukone, Raman Ghosh, Davinder Ahuja, Ami Ghia, Syed Modi, P. Ganguli, Madhumita Bisht, Rajeev Bagga, Pullela Gopichand, George Thomas, Madasu Srinivas Rao (Physically Challenged), Abhinn Shyam Gupta, Aparna Popat, Chetan Anand, Anup Sridhar and Saina Nehwal.
