New Delhi. The Sahitya Akademi on Thursday announced the prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award for the year 2021 to writers of 20 Indian languages, including Dayaprakash Sinha for Hindi, Namita Gokhale in English and West Bengal Education Minister Bratya Basu in Bengali.
Akademi secretary K Srinivasa Rao said in a release that for Hindi, Dayaprakash Sinha has been selected for his play ‘Samrat Ashok’, for English, Namita Gokhale for his novel ‘Things to Leave Behind’, for Bengali, Basu for his play ‘Mir Jafar’. The Sahitya Akademi Award has been announced for Khalid Hussain for ‘O Ananya Natak’ and for Punjabi for his short story collection ‘Sulan Da Salan’.
He said that the awards announced for the Sahitya Akademi Awards 2021 include seven collections of poems, five collections of stories, two novels, two plays, one biography, one autobiography, one epic and one criticism book. The secretary said, “The awards were recommended by the jury committees of these Indian languages and were approved today in the meeting of the Akademi’s executive board held under the chairmanship of Dr. Chandrashekhar Kambar, president of the Sahitya Akademi.”
Rao said that the awards for Gujarati, Maithili, Manipuri and Urdu languages would be announced later. The Akademi awards a total of 24 Indian languages writers every year. According to Rao, Modaya Gahai (Bodo), Sanjeev Verenkar (Konkani), Hrishikesh Mallick (Odia), Mitesh Nirmohi (Rajasthani), Vindhyeshwari Prasad Mishra ‘Vinay’ (Sanskrit), Arjun Chawla (Sindhi), Gorati, for his poetry collections. Venkanna (Telugu) will be rewarded. He said that Raj Rahi (Dogri), Kiran Gurav (Marathi), Niranjan Hansda (Santali) and Ambai (Tamil) would be awarded for the collection of stories.
According to the secretary of the Academy, Anuradha Sharma Pujari (Assamese) for the novel, D.S. Nagabhushan (Kannada), Chhavi Lal Upadhyay (Nepali) for Epic, George Onakkur (Malayalam) for Autobiography and Wali Mohammad Asir Kishtwari (Kashmiri) for Criticism have been selected for the award. Along with this, the Akademi has also announced Yuva Puraskar and Children’s Literature Award 2021. Youth and Child Awards are being given for 22 Indian languages.
Rao told that in the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar 2021, Himanshu Bajpayee for his short story collection “Kissa Kissa Lucknowwa-Lucknow Ke Awami Kisse” for Hindi, Megha Majumdar for English for her novel “A Raining”, Urdu Awards have been announced to Umar Farhat for his poetry collection ‘Zameen Zaad’ and for Punjabi to Virdevinder Singh for his essay collection ‘Paa De Pailan’. The award in Tamil will be announced later and this year the award in Rajasthani will not be announced.
He told that in the Sahitya Akademi Children’s Awards, Devendra Mewari for his play-collection ‘Nataka-Natak Mein Vigyan’ for Hindi, Anita Vachcharjani in English for her biographical book ‘Amrita Sher-Gil: Rebel with a Paintbrush’, Kausar for Urdu Siddiqui has been announced an award for his collection of poems ‘Charag Phool Ke’. Awards are not being given in Gujarati and Punjabi language this year.
Rao said, “These books have been selected for the award by the three-member jury of the respective language following the prescribed selection process. According to the rules, the Executive Board has announced the prizes for the books selected on the basis of majority or consensus of the judges.
According to the secretary, an engraved copper plate, shawl and an amount of Rs one lakh will be given to the main prize winner and an engraved copper plate and an amount of Rs 50,000 will be given to the Yuva Puraskar and Children’s Sahitya Puraskar. Prizes will be presented to all the winners at a special ceremony later.
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