Usually the award is conferred upon three to six people in a year, a few exceptions have been made (1994, 1995, 2017 and 2019) when more than six recipients were awarded in a year. In its initial year, twenty-two awards were presented, the highest so far for a single year. Nineteen of these awards were given to the 1993 Indo-Nepalese Women's Everest Expedition lead by Bachendri Pal. The expedition created four world records at the time including the largest number of mountaineers (eighteen) from a single expedition and the largest number of women (seven) from a single country to scale Everest. In 2017, ten awards were presented, out of which six were given to the members of Navika Sagar Parikrama. They were an all women Indian Navy officers sailing team for the circumnavigation of globe, aboard the Indian Navy Sailing Vessel Tarini (pictured), led by Lieutenant Commander Vartika Joshi. Chandraprabha Aitwal (pictured) is the only double recipient of the award, once in 1994 in the category of land adventure for being part of 1993 Indo-Nepalese Women's Everest Expedition and second time in 2009 in the category of lifetime achievement in the discipline of mountaineering. Prior to creation of this award as Arjuna award used to be also given for adventure sports and mountaineering, eight people have won both the awards. Five expedition members of India's first successful bid to Mount Everest in 1965, Nawang Gombu, Gurdial Singh, Mohan Singh Kohli, H. P. S. Ahluwalia and Sonam Wangyal were awarded the lifetime achievement awards in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2017 respectively. They were all awarded the team Arjuna award in 1965. Chandraprabha Aitwal and Bachendri Pal were awarded the Arjuna Award in field of mountaineering in 1981 and 1984 respectively. Bula Choudhury was awarded the Arjuna award in 1990 in the field of swimming and was presented with the adventure award in 2002 for lifetime achievement in the disciple of open water swimming.