'Poetic Justice' at this year's Sahitya Akademi Awards

New Delhi, Dec 21 (UNI) It was 'poetic justice' at last as seven poets were selected for this year's prestigious Sahitya Akademi Awards which would be conferred on a total of 23 eminent Indian litterateurs for their excellence in different genres of literature.

Famous poets Darshan Darshi (Dogri), Gyanendrapati (Hindi), Shafi Shauq (Kashmiri), Banshidhar Sarangi (Oriya), Harshadev Madhav (Sanskrit), Mu. Metha (Tamil) and Makhmoor Saeedi (Urdu) are among the 23, who were honoured with the award.

The award, in the form of a casket and containing an engraved copper plaque and a cheque for Rs 50,000 each, will be presented at a special function to be held here on February 20.

Seven books of poetry, four novels, four collections of short stories, three books each of plays and creative essays and one each of travelogue and biography have won the award.

However, no award was announced in the category of English literature as the meeting on selecting the award for this section could not take place, Akademi Secretary Agrahara Krishna Murthy said while announcing the awards.

''It will be declared in due course,'' he informed.

Those who won the awards for their collection of short stories include Atulananda Goswami (Assamese), Vibhuti Anand (Maithili), M Sukumaran (Malayalam) and Munipalle Raju (Telugu).

The well-known novelists honoured with the award for the year are Amar Mitra (Bengali), Katindra Swargiary (Bodo), Aashe Bage (Marathi) and Bhim Dahal (Nepali).

Noted playwrights Ajmer Singh Aulakh (Punjabi), Laxmi Narayan Ranga (Rajasthan) and Kirat Babani (Sindhi) got the award for their collection of plays.

Ratilal 'Anil' (Gujarati), M M Kalburgi (Kannada) and Datta Damodar Naik (Konkani) were honoured for their books of creative essays and serious research articles while Saratchand Thiyam (Manipuri) won the awardfor his travelogue and Ram Chandra Murmu (Santhali) for his biography.

The awards, recommended by a distinguished jury representing 23 Indian languages, were approved by the Executive Board of the Sahitya Akademi, which met at New Delhi today under the chairmanship of its President Gopi Chand Narang.

The awards relate to to books first published during the three years immediately preceding the yaer of the award -- between January 1, 2002 and and December 31, 2004.

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