President Murmu to Confer Sangeet Natak Akademi Awards 2024-25 on August 13

President Droupadi Murmu will confer the Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowships and Awards for 2024 and 2025 at a ceremony at Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi on August 13. The event, scheduled for 11:30 am, will be attended by the President as Chief Guest.

Presented by the Sangeet Natak Akademi, India's National Academy of Music, Dance and Drama, the honours recognise outstanding contributions to the country's diverse performing-arts traditions.

The Akademi Fellowships, or Akademi Ratna, for the period include Ramlal Bareth, A.V. Anand, Rita Ganguly, Puru Dadheech, Chittaranjan Jyotishi, Pasumarthi Rattaiah Sarma and Sudharani Raghupathy.

The 2024 awards cover music, dance, theatre, folk and tribal traditions, puppetry, mask making, instrument making and other performing arts. Music honours recognise artists from Hindustani, Carnatic, creative and experimental music and other traditions, including Arun Kashalkar, Nirmalya Dey, Bharat Bhushan Goswami, Sanjay Mukherjee and Rakesh Chaurasia.

The 2024 Dance Awards span Bharatanatyam, Kathak, Manipuri, Kuchipudi, Odissi, Sattriya, Mohiniattam and Chhau, with recipients including Rajeswari Sainath, Bipul Chandra Das, Rajkumari Thambalsana Devi and Veena Murthy Vijay. Theatre honours recognise practitioners in direction, acting and allied arts, including T.S. Nagabharana, Om Katare and Vaagai Chandrasekar.

The awards also highlight folk and tribal traditions from states including Telangana, Karnataka, Bihar, Odisha, Haryana, Nagaland, Manipur, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, besides traditional instrument-making and puppetry. The Overall and Others category includes recognition for music, dance, scholarship, art critique and overseas contributions.

The 2025 awards similarly recognise classical and traditional arts. Music recipients include Krishna Mohan Pathak, Pantula Rama and Papanasam Ashok Ramani, while dance honours include Roja Kanan, Kalamandalam Krishnakumar, Ileana Citaristi and Mallika Kandali.

Theatre awards recognise direction, acting and allied arts, while traditional-art practitioners from Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Tripura, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Ladakh, Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram are also honoured. Sindhe Chithambara Rao has been recognised for Andhra Pradesh's shadow puppetry.

The honours underline the Akademi's role in preserving India's performing-arts heritage by recognising performers, teachers, researchers, critics and traditional practitioners.