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Sangeet Natak Akademi, in addition to selecting 128 performing artistes from various fields for its regular annual awards for the year 2019-21, presents special one-time awards to 86 artistes to commemorate 75 years of India’s independence .
The 86 awardees for the one-time awards to be named as the Sangeet Natak Akademi Amrit Puraskar are artistes who are above 75 years of age and have not received any national recognition so far in their career in the field of performing arts. The award carries a purse of ₹ 1,00,000.
Amrit awardees are from across the country, including five from Tamil Nadu – R.K. Ramani, VAK Rangarao for dance music, Sundaresan Ramamurthy for theatre, Purusai Subramaniam for Terukuthu and Achalapuram Chinnatambi for Nagaswaram. The awardees also include five artists each from Karnataka and Kerala and four from Telangana.
The Academy’s General Council elected ten eminent persons as Fellows at a meeting on 6–8 November. The prestigious fellowship is limited to 40 at any given time. At present the number is 39, including those selected this year.
Saroja Vaidyanathan, Sadanam Krishnam Kutty, Darshan Jhaveri, Channulal Mishra, AKC Natarajan, Swapna Chowdhary, Malini Rajurkar, TV Gopalakrishnan, Teejan Bai and Bharat Gupta have been selected as fellows.
The General Council of the Akademi also selected 128 artistes from the fields of music, dance, theatre, folk, tribal and puppetry for the Sangeet Natak Akademi Awards, popularly known as Akademi Awards, for the years 2019, 2020 and 2021. These include three joint awards.
While the Akademi Fellowship carries a purse of ₹3,00,000, it is ₹1,00,000 for the Academy Award.
Sangeet Natak Akademi Awards to be presented by the President of India at a special investiture ceremony
In addition, the Akademi announced the names of 102 young artistes for the Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar for the years 2019, 2020 and 2021. These include three joint awards.
The award, given to artistes below the age of 40 years, was instituted with the objective of identifying and encouraging outstanding young talents in various fields of performing arts and giving them national recognition early in their lives, so that They can work with more commitment and dedication in their chosen fields. The awardees include 19 people from the North Eastern states. The award carries a purse of ₹ 25,000.