Kolkata: Two-time Olympic gold medallist, hockey player Keshav Dutt and former India football captain Prasun Banerjee will be conferred the ‘Mohun Bagan Ratna’ during the annual day celebrations July 29, the club said, Monday.
Mohun Bagan will also felicitate pacer Mohammed Shami, India’s hat-trick hero of the 2019 ICC World Cup, while another former footballer Ashok Chatterjee will be given the ‘Lifetime Achievement’ award.
The Mariners will also give honorary life memberships to Sourav Ganguly, Chuni Goswami, Dr Vece Paes, actors Prasenjit Chatterjee and Deb Shankar Halder.
One of the oldest surviving hockey Olympians of the country, 94-year-old Keshav Dutt donned the national jersey in the 1948 London Games, where India won the first gold post Independence, and the former centre- halfback won his second Olympic gold in Helsinki 1952.
This is for the first time Mohun Bagan’s executive committee has decided to confer their highest honour to a non-footballer in the form of Keshav Dutt.
Younger brother of the legendary PK Banerjee, footballer-turned-politician Prasun was part of the feted midfield trio also comprising Parminder Singh. The creative midfielder from Bengal was an integral part of the Indian team that reached the quarterfinals of the 1982 Asian Games in New Delhi.
In 2013, Prasun Banerjee became a Trinamool Congress MP from the Howrah Sadar constituency, becoming the first professional footballer to be a Member of Parliament.
July 29 is celebrated as the ‘Mohun Bagan Day’ because on this day in 1911, the Mariners became the first club to defeat a British club, East Yorkshire Regiment, and lift the IFA Shield.
PTI