The second highest civilian honor of India Padma Vibhushan is established January 2, 1954. It given for exceptional and prominent service to the nation in any field including government servants. It was suspended from July 13, 1977 to January 26, 1980.

The decoration is circular in design with a geometrical pattern superimposed on the circle. The diameter of the circular portion is 4.4 cm and the thickness about 0.6 mm. On the obverse, there is a lotus flower embossed in the circular space. The word "Padma" is embossed in Hindi above and the word Vibhushan below the lotus flower. On the reverse are state emblem and the motto in Hindi. It is of toned bronze. The inscription "Padma Vibhushan" on the obverse, the geometrical pattern on either side and the border around periphery are in burnished bronze. All embossing on either side of decoration is in white gold.

2000
• Bhairab Datt Pande	• Pandit Hari Prasad Chaurasia		• Pandit Jasraj Motiram
• Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra	• Dr. Krishnaswamy Kasturirangan		• Dr. Manohar Singh Gill
• Tarlok Singh	• Prof Kakkadan Nandanath Raj		• Dr. Krishen Behari Lall
• Maidavolu Narasimham	• Sikander Bakht
2001
• Ustad Amjad Ali Khan	• Shri Benjamin Arthur Gilman		• Dr. Calyampudi Radhakrishna
• Dr. Chakravarthi Vijayaraghava	• Shri Hosei Norota		• Shri Hrishikesh Mukherjee
• Shri Hrishikesh Mukherjee	• Shri John Kenneth Galbraith		• Shri Kotta Satchidananda Murty
• Prof. Man Mohan Sharma	• Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma		• Shri Zubin Mehta
2002
• Dr. Chakravarthi Rangarajan	• Smt. Kishori Amonkar		• Shri Soli Jehangir Sorabjee
• Smt. Gangubai Hangal	• Pandit Kishan Maharaj
2003
• Bal Ram Nanda	• Kazi Lhendup Dorji		• Sonal Mansingh
• Vaid Bhrihaspati Dev Triguna
2004
• Amrita Pritam	• Jayant VishnuNarlikar		• M. N. Venkatachaliah
2005
• Dr. Bal Krishan Goyal	• Dr. Bhai Mohan Singh		• Late Jyotindra Nath Dixit
• Prof. (Dr) Martanda Varma Sankaran Valiathan	• Milon Kumar Benerji		• Mohan Dharia
• Pandit Ram Narayan	• Rasipuram Krishnaswami Laxman
2006
• Adoor Gopalakrishnan (Arts – Cinema)		• CR Krishnaswamy Rao (Civil Service)
• Charles Correa (Science and Engineering)		• Mahashweta Devi (Literature and Education)
• Nirmala Deshpande (Social Work)		• Norman E Borlaug (Science and Engineering)
• Obaid Siddiqui (Science and Engineering)		• Prakash Narain Tandon (Medicine)
• Justice VN Khare (Public Affairs)