SAHITYA AKADEMI AWARDS 2011

Eight books of poetry, seven of novels,  three of essays, one each  of short stories, narrative history, biography and a play have won the Sahitya Akademi Award this year.
The Awards were recommended by distinguished Jury members representing 23 Indian languages and approved by the Executive Board of the Sahitya Akademi which met today under the Chairmanship of Sri Sunil Gangopadhyay, President of the Sahitya Akademi.
Famous poets honoured with the Award for the year 2011 are (late) Kabin Phukan (Assamese), Manindra Gupta (Bengali), Premananda Mosahari (Bodo),  Naseem Shafaie (Kashmiri), Melvyn Rodrigues (Konkani), Harekrishna Satapathy  (Sanskrit),  Aditya Kumar Mandi (Santali) and Khaleel Mamoon (Urdu).

The well-known novelists  Kashinath Singh (Hindi),  Gopalakrishna Pai (Kannada),  Kshetri Bira (Manipuri),  Kalpanakumari Devi (Odia), Baldev Singh (Punjabi),  Atul Kanakk (Rajasthani) and  S. Venkatesan (Tamil) are among those honoured with the Sahitya Akademi Awards 2011.
Lalit Magotra (Dogri),  Grace (Marathi) and  Samala Sadasiva (Telugu) have got the Award for their books of essays.
Ramachandra Guha (English) for his book of  Narrative History, Mohan Parmar (Gujarati) for his book of  short stories,  M. K. Sanu (Malayalam) for his book of biography and Mohan Gehani (Sindhi) for his 
book of plays have been honoured.
The books were selected on the basis of recommendations made by a Jury of three members in the concerned languages in accordance with the procedure laid down for the purpose.  According to the procedure, the Executive Board declared the Awards on the basis of unanimous selections made by the Jurors or selection made on the basis of majority vote.  The Awards relate to books first published during the three years immediately preceding the year of Award (i.e., between 1 January 2007 and 31 December 2009).  
Award in Maithili will be declared later.  No Award in Nepali.
The Award in the form of a casket containing an engraved copperplaque, a shawl  and a cheque of  Rs. 1,00,000/- will be presented to the authors of these books at a special function to be held on 14 February 2012 at New Delhi during the Festival of Letters organized by Sahitya Akademi.