The Sahitya Academy on December 21 announced the names of 24 poets and authors who will be conferred the prestigious 2016 Sahitya Akademi Award.
This award has recognised premier works in 24 Indian languages that includes 8 books of poetry, 7 books of short stories, 5 books of novels, 2 books of criticism and 1 book each of essays and play. Winners are Play: Swarajbir (Punjabi). Essay: Nrisinghaprasad Bhaduri (Bengali). Criticism: Aziz Hajini (Kashmiri) and Nizam Siddiqui (Urdu).
Short stories: Chahatrapal (Dogri), Shyan Darihare (Maithili), Moirangthem Rajen (Manipuri), Asaram Lomate (Marathi), Paramita Satpathy (Odia), Bulaki Sharma (Rajasthani) Vannadhasan (Tamil).
Poetry: Jnan Pujari (Assamese), Anju (Bodo), Kamal Vora (Gujarati), Prabha Varma (Malayalam), Sitanath Acharya (Sanskrit), Gobinda Chandra Majhi (Santhali), Nand Javeri (Sindhi) and Papineni Sivasankar (Telugu). Background All 24 awardees were chosen by a distinguished jury representing 24 Indian languages.
The final approval was given by the Executive Board of the Sahitya Akademi chaired by its President Dr. Vishwanath Prasad Tiwari. They will be presented with awards at a special function to be held on 22 February 2016 during the Festival of Letters – the annual function of the Akademi.
Every year since its inception in 1954, the Sahitya Akademi Award prizes to the most outstanding books of literary merit published in any of the major Indian languages recognised by the Akademi. The award amount, which was Rs.5,000 since inception, had been enhanced to Rs.10,000 from 1983, Rs.25,000 from 1988, Rs.40,000 from 2001, Rs.50,000 from 2003 and is now Rs.1,00,000 from 2009. The first Awards were given in 1955.
