New Delhi: The Delhi government’s Hindi Academy has renamed its various literary awards after prominent nationalist leaders and freedom fighters, including VD Savarkar, Deen Dayal Upadhyay, and Madan Mohan Malviya.
Officials said two new award categories — national consciousness, Indian culture and knowledge tradition — were created and named after Veer Savarkar and former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, respectively.
An award has also been named after the late Vijay Kumar Malhotra, a BJP veteran who passed away last September, to honour those dedicated to the service of Hindi.
The award was earlier known as the ‘Hindi Sewa Samman’.
Applications for awards invited
Meanwhile, the Hindi Academy has invited applications for various award categories for the 2022-23, 2023-24, 2024-25, and 2025-26 academic years. Officials said eligible litterateurs, poets, and journalists based in the National Capital Region (NCR)-Delhi must submit their entries by June 23 under the academy’s ‘Sahityakar Samman Yojna’.
The official said the academy will provide sixteen award categories, carrying cash prizes, to Hindi litterateurs, poets and journalists who have worked to promote the national language. Hindi Academy Shalaka Samman now rechristened as Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay Shalaka Samman will carry a cash prize of Rs 7 lakh which was Rs 5 lakh earlier.
Cash rewards
The ‘Atal Bihari Vajpayee Bhartiya Sanskriti and Gyan Parampara Samman’ will have a cash reward of Rs 5 lakh. Rani Ahilyabai Holkar Samman (for women litterateurs), Sant Ravidas Sahitya Samman, and Veer Savarkar Samman for national consciousness will each carry a cash prize of Rs 2 lakh. The award for women litterateurs was earlier named after Santosh Koli, an anti-corruption activist who died in a road accident. The previous AAP government in Delhi named the award in her memory.
Other categories of the awards include Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya Hindi Sahityakar Samman, Baba Jorawar Singh Samman (children’s literature), Swami Vivekanand Yuva Pratibha Samman, with a reward of Rs 1 lakh each. Both the Hindi journalism award (Vidya Niwas Mishra Samman) and the Dr Vijay Kumar Malhotra Hindi Sevi Samman for the promotion of the Hindi language carry cash prizes of Rs 1 lakh each.
The details of the awards have been uploaded on the academy’s website.
Awards for Hindi translation, folk writings
The awards also include the Nirmal Verma Samman for Hindi translation, the Ramchandra Shukla Hindi Utkarsh Samman, the Vasudev Sharan Agrawal Samman for folk writings, the Devendra Swaroop Samman for writings in science, economics, political science, history, sociology and other subjects, the Mridula Sinha Samman for women litterateurs, and the Narendra Kohli Samman for writings in various forms of literature.
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