New Delhi: The President of India, Smt. Pratibha Devisingh Patil is going to confer the prestigious Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowships and Akademi Awards for 2008 at a special ceremony on July 14, 2009 at Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi.

The Akademi Fellowship (Akademi Ratna) and Akademi Awards (Akademi Puraskar) are considered as the highest national honour awarded on practicing artists, gurus and scholars and have come to stay as the most coveted honour which the artistes aspire to.

This year the most popular honour of Akademi Fellowship (Akademi Ratna) will be awarded to renowned personalities in the field of performing arts namely Smt Sitara Devi, famous Kathak dancer from Mumbai, Shri Khaled Chowdhury, eminent stage designer from Kolkata, Shri R.C. Mehta, prominent scholar of performing arts from Vadodara and Shri Bhupen Hazarika, eminent personality in the field of performing arts and noted folk musician from Guwahati.

The Akademi Fellowship (Akademi Ratna Sadyasta) offers money of Rs 1, 00,000 (Rupees one lakh), besides a citation, an angavastram and a tamrapatra. The Akademi Fellowship is restricted to 30 living persons at any given point of time.

The General Council of the Akademi also selected 34 practitioners of Music, Dance and Theatre for 33 awards including one joint award for the Akademi Puraskar (Akademi Award) for the year 2008. The Akademi Award is worth money of Rs 50,000 (Rupees fifty thousand), citation, angavastram and tamrpatra.

Eight eminent artists from musical field namely Ulhas Kashalkar and M.R. Gautam for Hindustani Vocal Music; Ramesh Mishra (Sarangi) and Krishna Ram Chaudhary (Shehnai) for Hindustani Instrumental Music; Puranam Purushottama Sastri for Carnatic Vocal; B. Sasi Kumar (Violin) and Manrgudi A. Easwaran (Mridangam) for Carnatic Instrumental Music and Ningombam Ibobi Singh (Nata Sankirtana, Manipur) for other Major Traditions of Music have been selected.

From the field of dance, nine well-known practioners namely Saroja Vaidyanathan, Bharatanatyam; Shashi Shankhla, Kathak; Kalamandalam Kuttan, Kathakali; Ramani Ranjan Jena, Odissi; M. Vasanthalakshmi & M.V. Narasimhachari (Joint Award), Kuchipudi; Kalamandalam Leelamma, Mohiniattam; Yogsunder Desai, Creative & Experimental Dance and Ramhari Das, Music for Dance (Odissi) have been selected.

Theatre personalities namely Markand Bhatt and Arundhati Nag for Acting, S. Ramanujam and Probir Guha for Direction, Mudra Rakshasa (Hindi) and Narsingh Dev Jamwal (Dogri) for Playwriting, Amba Sanyal for Allied Theatre Arts (Costume Designing) and Bansi Lal Khilari (Khayal, Rajasthan) for Major Traditions of Theatre have been chosen.

In the field of other Traditional/Folk/ Tribal Music/ Dance/ Theatre, Shakuntala Nagarkar, Lavani (Maharastra); Birabar Sahoo, Gotipua (Orissa); Mangi Bai Arya, Mand (Rajasthan); L. Heramot Meitei, Thang-Ta (Martial Art, Manipur); Lakha Khan Mangniyar, Folk Music (Rajasthan); Hilda Mit Lepcha, Lepcha Music (Sikkim); Kartar Singh, Gurbani (Punjab) and Lakshman Das, Hari Katha (Karnataka) have been selected.