The Sahitya Akademi on Thursday, December 18, cancelled a press conference convened to announce its annual literary awards after receiving a directive from the Union Ministry of Culture, leading to confusion and the awards process being put on hold.
The press conference, scheduled for 3 pm in Delhi after a meeting of the Akademi’s Executive Board, was called off minutes before it was to begin. The Executive Board had cleared the awardees at the meeting held prior to the proposed announcement.
Ahead of the press conference, the Ministry of Culture sent a note to the Sahitya Akademi referring to a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed in July with four autonomous institutions under the Ministry — the Sahitya Akademi, Sangeet Natak Akademi, Lalit Kala Akademi and the National School of Drama. The MoU states that any restructuring of awards must be undertaken in consultation with the Ministry.
“This is to invite your attention to the Memorandum of Understanding signed between the Akademies and the Ministry for the year 2025–26, wherein it has been stipulated that the exercise of restructuring of awards is required to be undertaken in consultation with the Ministry,” the note said. It asked the Akademi to inform the Ministry of the measures taken so far.
The Ministry further directed that until the restructuring process is approved, “no process for declaration of awards shall be undertaken without the prior approval of the Ministry”. The note was sent to all four autonomous cultural bodies on Thursday.
The Hindu reported that the directive was issued as the press conference had been called without the Ministry’s knowledge and without approval of the due process for the selection of awardees. Sources in the Ministry of Culture told the newspaper that the MoUs were signed as part of a broader restructuring of awards being undertaken under the aegis of the Union Ministry of Home Affairs.
The Sahitya Akademi confers awards every year to authors and books in 24 languages. A member of the Executive Board told The Telegraph that a suggestion from a Ministry representative on the board to review the names of the awardees was rejected. According to the member, the board maintained that once the names were approved, the announcement would be made by the secretary, and that there were no suggestions from the Ministry to include any names.
CPI(M) general secretary MA Baby criticised the development, calling it “extremely deplorable” that the Sahitya Akademi had sent its award recommendations to the Union government. In a social media post, he said this was the first time an autonomous body such as the Akademi was seeking the government’s approval for its awards and termed it a betrayal of its founding vision. “All those who love letters and literature should unite to resist this affront on our freedom of expression,” he said.