Presenting the award, the Minister said, Lata Mangeshkar blessed with a golden voice is the pride of the Indian music industry. He described the Indian film industry as a true cultural ambassador and called upon the film fraternity to zealously guard its role.
Dedicated to the memory of veteran director Yash Chopra, the award carries a cash prize of 10 lakh rupees and a citation.
Lata Mangeshkar About this sound pronunciation (help·info) (born 28 September 1929), commonly referred to as Lataji, is an Indian singer, and occasional music-composer. She is one of the best-known and most respected playback singers in India. Mangeshkar's career started in 1942 and has spanned over seven decades. She has recorded songs for over a thousand Hindi films and has sung songs in over thirty-six regional Indian languages and foreign languages, though primarily in Marathi and Hindi. She is the elder sister of singers Asha Bhosle, Hridaynath Mangeshkar, Usha Mangeshkar and Meena Mangeshkar. She is the second vocalist to have ever been awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honour.
Mangeshkar was featured in the Guinness Book of World Records from 1974 to 1991 for having made the most recordings in the world. The claim was that she had recorded approximately 25,000 solo, duet, and chorus-backed songs in 20 Indian languages between 1948 to 1974. The category was removed in 1991 and re-introduced in 2011. In 2011 Guinness officially acknowledged Mangeshkar's sister Asha Bhosle as the most recorded artist in music history
