The only woman lifter with a record of winning a medal in every competition she has taken part, Nameirakpam Kunjarani Devi has the distinction of being the first Gold Medallist in the Commonwealth Championships held at Nauru in 1995 in the 48-kilogram category. That was the year she was ranked World No.1, a position from which she has since slipped to No.3. She has won 51 medals on the international stage.
Kunjarani has received due recognition for her achievements in weightlifting. She was honoured with the Arjuna award in 1990, the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award in 1996 and the K.K.Birla Sports Award, also in 1996.
Born on 1 March 1968 at Kairang Mayai Leikai in Imphal in Manipur, Kunjarani Devi started taking interest in sports while still in Imphal's Sindam Sinshang Resident High school in 1978. And by the time she finished her graduation from the Maharaja Bodha Chandra College in Imphal, weightlifting had become her first choice. Joining the Central Reserve Police Force she went on to make waves in the Police Championships and captained the Indian Police team from 1996 to 1998.
Beginning 1985, she has been consistently winning medals, mostly Gold, in the National Weightlifting Championships in 44-kilogram, 46kilogram and 48-kilogram, the latter now her consistent weight. She created two new National Records in Trivandrum in 1987. Changing her weight category to 46-kilogram she claimed a Gold in Pune in 1994 but was relegated to Silver when she tried to compete in the 48-kilogram class four years later in Manipur.
Her first World Women's Weightlifting Championship was the Manchester edition in 1989 and the reward of three Silver Medals buoyed her spirits considerably. Since then she has taken part in seven successive World Championships and with the exception of the Melbourne edition in 1993, she has won medals at every one of those competitions. Despite her tremendous efforts in these championships, she however could not get to the top spot, having always to be content with Silver Medals.
A Bronze Medal was the most she managed in the Asian Games at Beijing in 1990 and Hiroshima in 1994 but failed to secure any medal in the 1998 edition of the Asian Games at Bangkok. Kunjarani has had better luck in the Asian Weightlifting Championships to which she has been a regular visitor. Starting with one Silver and two Bronze Medals in the 1989 edition in Shanghai, she progressed to three Silver Medals in the 44-kilogram class in the 1991 edition in Indonesia. She retained her second spot in the next one in Thailand in 1992 and China in 1993. Her best performance came in the 1995 competition in South Korea where she won two Gold and one Bron2e in the 46-kilogram category. But again went down in 1996 to settle for two Silver and one Bronze in the championship held in Japan.

Source : "India's Highest Sports Awards and Those Who Won Them" by S.S.Gandhi, The Defence Review