Kamal Tanti wins Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar 2012

Poetry dominated the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar 2012 which was recently announced by the Sahitya Akademi. In a communiqué to Assam Times, secretary in charge of the Akademi, K. Srinivasa Rao stated that of the 19 selected languages, awards for the Manipuri, Nepali, Santali, and Telegu languages will be declared at a later date.

Eights books on poetry, five novels, two short stories, one on literary criticism, one play and two essays have won the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar while there have been no awards for the Sindhi language this year.

The awards were recommended by a distinguished jury representing 19 Indian languages and approved by the executive board of the Sahitya Akademi which met under the chairmanship of Vishwanath Prasad Tiwari- the acting president of the Akademi.

Those who won awards for their collection on poetry include Kamal Kumar Tanti (Assamese), Yash Raina (Dogri), Jatush Joshi (Gujarati), Arif Raja (Kannada), Arunabh Saurabh (Maithili), Lopa R (Malayalam), Om Nagar (Rajasthani) and Pravin Pandya (Sanskrit). Diganta Lawary (Bodo), Aman Sethi (English), Kunal Singh (Hindi), Pargat Singh Satauj (Punjabi) and E. Mary Flora (Tamil) for their novels. Sadique Hussain (Bengali) and Srutishree Naik (Odia) won in the short stories category while Dharmakriti Sumant won for his play. Winners for literary criticism are Farooq Shaheen (Kashmiri) and Naman Dhawskar Sawant (Konkani). Dr. Ghaznafar Iqbal (Urdu) bagged an award for his essays.

According to the procedure, the Executive Board declared the awards on a unanimous selection made on the basis of majority vote made by the jury. The award relates to books published by an author of the age of 35 and below as on 1^st January of the year of the Award. A casket containing an engraved copper plaque and a cheque of Rupees 50, 000/- which will be presented to the awardees at a special function held at a later date.