Recipients of Jnanpith Award

The Jnanpith Award is the highest literary award in India. It is presented by the Bharatiya Jnanpith, a trust founded by the Sahu Jain family, the publishers of The Times of India newspaper. The Jnanpith Award is given to any Indian writer for his or her outstanding contribution in any of the 18 languages mentioned in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution. It is given for outstanding contribution to creative writing in a specified period of 15 years but excluding the five years immediately preceding the year.

Following is the list of the Jnanpith Awardees, so far:

Laureates Awarded	Year	Language
Akhlaq Khan Shahryar	2008	Urdu
O. N. V. Kurup	2007	Malayalam
Satyavrat Shastri	2006	Sanskrit
Ravindra Kelekar	2006	Konkani
Kunwar Narain	2005	Hindi
Rahman Rahi	2004	Kashmiri
Vinda Karandikar	2003	Marathi
D. Jayakanthan	2002	Tamil
Rajendra Shah	2001	Gujarati
Indira Goswami	2000	Assamese
Nirmal Verma	1999	Hindi
Gurdial Singh	1999	Punjabi
Girish Karnad	1998	Kannada
Ali Sardar Jafri	1997	Urdu
Mahasveta Devi	1996	Bangla
M.T. Vasudevan Nair	1995	Malayalam
U.R. Anantha Murthy	1994	Kannada
Sitakant Mahapatra	1993	Oriya
Naresh Mehta	1992	Hindi
Subhash Mukhopadhyaya	1991	Bangla
V.K. Gokak	1990	Kannada
Qurratulain Hyder	1989	Urdu
C. Narayana Reddy	1988	Telugu
V.V.S. ‘Kusumagraj’	1987	Marathi
Satchidanand Rautroy	1986	Oriya
Pannalal Patel	1985	Gujarati
Thakazhi S. Pillai	1984	Malayalam
Masti V. Iyengar	1983	Kannada
Mahadevi Varma	1982	Hindi
Amrita Pritam	1981	Punjabi
S.K. Pottekkatt	1980	Malayalam,
B.K. Bhattacharya	1979	Assamese
S.H.V. Ajneya	1978	Hindi
K.S. Karanth	1977	Kannada
Ashapurna Devi	1976	Bangla
P.V. Akilandam	1975	Tamil
V.S. Khandekar	1974	Marathi
D.R. Bendre	1973	Kannada,
Gopinath Mohanty	1973	Oriya
Ramdhari Singh `Dinkar’	1972	Hindi
Bishnu Dey	1971	Bangla
V. Satyanarayana	1970	Telugu
Firaq Gorakhpuri	1969	Urdu
Sumitranandan Pant	1968	Hindi
Uma Shankar Joshi	1967	Gujarati
K.V. Puttappa	1967	Kannada
T.S. Bandyopadhyaya	1966	Bangla
G. Sankara Kurup	1965	Malayalam