Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar conferred Bharat Ratna

Sachin Tendulkar is the first sportsperson and the youngest recipient of the award. He joins the list of 41 eminent personalities who have earlier received the Bharat Ratna. 

Bharat Ratna is conferred "for the highest degrees of national service. This service includes artistic, literary, and scientific achievements, as well as "recognition of public service of the highest order." till 2011 and since has changed to "for performance of highest order in any field of human endeavor”.

1994: Arjuna Award, in recognition of his outstanding achievement in sports.
1997-98: Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna, India's highest honour given for achievement in sports.
1999: Padma Shri, India's fourth highest civilian award.
2008: Padma Vibhushan, India's second highest civilian award.
2014: Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award.

Earlier recipients of the award are:

#	Name	Awarded
1	C Rajagopalachari	1954
2	C. V. Raman	1954
3	Radhakrishnan	1954
4	Bhagwan Das	1955
5	Mokshagundam Visvesvarayya	1955
6	Jawaharlal Nehru	1955
7	Govind Ballabh Pant	1957
8	Dhondo Keshav Karve	1958
9	Bidhan Chandra Roy	1961
10	Purushottam Das Tandon	1961
11	Rajendra Prasad	1962
12	Zakir Hussain	1963
13	Pandurang Vaman Kane	1963
14	Lal Bahadur Shastri	1966
15	Indira Gandhi	1971
16	V. V. Giri	1975
17	K. Kamaraj	1976
18	Mother Teresa of Calcutta	1980
19	Vinoba Bhave	1983
20	Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan	1987
21	M. G. Ramachandran	1988
22	B. R. Ambedkar	1990
23	Nelson Mandela	1990
24	Rajiv Gandhi	1991
25	Vallabhbhai Patel	1991
26	Morarji Desai	1991
27	Abul Kalam Azad	1992
28	J. R. D. Tata	1992
29	Satyajit Ray	1992
30	A. P. J. Abdul Kalam	1997
31	Gulzarilal Nanda	1997
32	Aruna Asaf Ali	1997
33	M. S. Subbulakshmi	1998
34	Chidambaram Subramaniam	1998
35	Jayaprakash Narayan	1998
36	Ravi Shankar	1999
37	Amartya Sen	1999
38	Gopinath Bordoloi	1999
39	Lata Mangeshkar	2001
40	Bismillah Khan	2001
41	Bhimsen Joshi	2009
42	C. N. R. Rao	2014
43	Sachin Tendulkar	2014