Surjit Patar wins Saraswati Samman

Lafzan Di Dargah, a poetry collection in Punjabi by Surjit Patar, has been awarded the 19th Saraswati Samman for 2009.

Lafzan Di Dargah, a poetry collection in Punjabi by Surjit Patar, has been awarded the 19th Saraswati Samman for 2009.

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Patar, 65, has been chosen for the award by a 13-member jury led by former Chief Justice G.B. Patnaik. Published in 2003, Lafzan Di Dargah was selected after considering works published in 22 Indian languages between 1999 and 2008.

The award, instituted by the K.K. Birla Foundation in 1991, carries an award of Rs 5 lakh, a citation and a plaque.

Saraswati Samman is recognised as the most prestigious and the highest literary honour in the country. It is given every year to an outstanding literary work written in an Indian language and published during the last 10 years.

The first recipient of the award was Harivansh Rai Bachchan in 1991 for his autobiography. Other awardees include Marathi playwright Vijay Tendulkar, Oriya writer Manoj Das, Malayalam poetess Balamaniamma, Tamil writer Indira Parthasarathy, Bengali novelist Sunil Gangopadhyay and Urdu literary critic Shamsur Rahman Faruqi.