New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi has decided not to accept the awards returned by 35 winners to protest against rising intolerance.
K Sreenivas Rao, secretary, Sahitya Akademi informed that the Akademi will not encash cheques returned by all the winners because there are no such provisions to take back the awards.
"The Sahitya Akademi is an institution for the writers, by the writers and of the writers. They are respected writers and are like family members of the Akademi. They can never be separated from the institution and the Akademi has decided that it will not take back the awards," Rao explained to Times of India.
Rao further said that no institution that thinks about taking back awards while conferring them.
Replying to a question on resignation by five writers, including poet and executive board member K Satchidanandan, Rao said that the decision to step down is an individual decision and that there is no space for any political involvement in the Akademi.
On October 23, the Sahitya Akademi had passed a resolution during its emergency meeting condemning the killing of writer and rationalist MM Kalburgi in Karnataka earlier this year.
