Kalakar Awards

Kalakar Awards^[1] is an award ceremony held in Eastern India, attended by a host of dignitaries, stars & celebrities and draws attention from the electronic and print media.

History and background

Kalakar Awards is recognized as one of the leading awards ceremonies of Eastern India. The brand Kalakar is all about a vision and the relentless pursuit towards its success. It all started off 26 years ago when SHRI ASHOK KALANAURIA came up with a stirring vision.

Kolkata, a home to in Cinema, Television, Entertainment performances with its very own Tollywood, lacked the institution of annual awards for the most talented and outstanding performers. Finally this dream turned into reality on 1 January 1993 when the first Kalakar Awards were hosted at G. D. Birla Sabhaghar.

It honored several artistes for excellence in their work, it wrote a new chapter in the history of Award Ceremonies. This gave a chance to recognise entertainers. Annually accolades have been given to not only Tollywood Stars but also Stars from Bollywood, by awarding them a lady statuette. This, now annual, event is held at the Science City Auditorium, Kolkata.

The list of Kalakar Awardees runs into hundreds, some of the prominent stars includes:

From Bollywood : Sadhana Sargam, Nimmi, Dharmendra, Shammi Kapoor, Biswajit, Rishi Kapoor, Shatrughan Sinha, Manoj Bajpai, Farooque Shaikh, Pradeep Kumar, Asrani, A. K. Hangal, Amrish Puri, Raj Babbar, Prakash Mehra, B. R. Chopra, Ravi Chopra, Jaspal Bhatti, Vyjayantimala, Asha Parekh, Rani Mukherjee, Shabana Azmi, Neena Gupta, Ila Arun, Nandita Das, Naushad, Bappi Lahiri, Udit Narayan, Kumar Sanu, Sonu Nigam, Hariharan, Jagjit Singh and Remo Fernandes. Padmini Kolhapure, Jaya Prada, Celina Jaitley, Koena Mitra, Madhur Bhandarkar, Konkona Sen Sharma, Deepti Naval, Farida Jalal, Daler Mehndi, Zubeen Garg, Pankaj Udhas, Aadesh Srivastav, Randhir Kapoor, Shiney Ahuja, Mahesh Bhatt, Mukesh Bhatt, Emraan Hashmi, Farhan Akhtar, Prachi Desai, Sonal Chauhan, Kailash Kher, Sudesh Bhonsle, Raveena Tandon, Amrita Rao, Aftab Shivdasani, Rati Agnihotri, Boman Irani, Farah Khan, Mallika Sherawat, Gauhar Khan & Anupam Kher.

From Tollywood : Tarun Majumdar, Mrinal Sen, Gautam Ghosh, Aparna Sen, Ranjit Mallick, Soumitra Chatterjee, Victor Banerjee, Mamata Shankar, Roopa Ganguly, Rituparna Sengupta, Prosenjit, Rachana Banerjee, Chiranjeet, Debashree Roy, Anjan Dutt, Tapas Paul, Usha Uthup, Indrani Haldar, Ananda Shankar & Tanushree Shankar, Koel Mallick and Jeet. Indrani Dutta, Arjun Chakraborty, Bickram Ghosh, Satabdi Roy, Churni Ganguly, Moon Moon Sen, Koneenika Bandyopadhyay, Haimanti Sukla, Dev, Rituparno Ghosh, Subhasree, Swastika Mukherjee, Ankush Hazra, Mir Afsar Ali.

From the Sub Continent : Runa Laila from Bangladesh, Gulam Ali from Pakistan and Sushil Chetri & Malini Manandhar from Nepal. Eva Rahman, Geetali Hassan, Arifa Praveen Zamil Mousumi from Bangladesh.

From the Television : Neena Gupta, Kanwaljeet, Dara Singh, Jaspal Bhatti, Rina Wadwa, Ali Azgar, Urvashi Dholakia, Ruby Bhatia, Ronit Roy, Kiran Karmakar, Ragini Khanna, Sakshi Tanwar, Mohit Sehgal, Arjun Bijlani, Jaya Bhattacharyya, Jaya Sil, Sharad Kelkar, Prachi Desai, Iqbal Khan, Reena Kapoor, Priya Bhattacharyya, Ekta Kapoor, Rajeev Khandelwal, Aamna Shariff, Mir, Divyanka Tripathi, Sharad Malhotra, Aditya Narayan, Karan V Grover, Meghna Mallik, Tina Datta, Ratan Rajput, Karan Singh Grover, Karan Mehra, Jay Soni, Anupam Shyam, Sudeep Sahir, Sushant Singh Rajput, Ankita Lokhande, Sumona Chakravarti, Delnaaz Irani, Gia Manek, Shakti Arora, Dilip Joshi, Disha Vakani, Preetika Rao, Harshad Arora.

The team behind the Kalakar Awards comprises professionals from different walks of life, like the public services, police services, banking sector, business and corporate houses and also from NGO's and cultural organizations. This like minded group of people comes together each year to organize this grand celebration. Each one brings his or her own expertise and together unfolds the annual Kalakar Awards, which is now in its 23rd year. The quest is common, to continue honoring the exceptional talents of Bollywood and Tollywood. And to keep the Kalakar Awards flag fluttering high in the winds of Cinema, Television, & Entertainment .

Awards

Film

Television

Music

• Best Playback Singer
• Best Music Director
• Best Music Album

Other

• Living Legend Award
• Lifetime Achievement Award
• Achiever Awards

References

External links

• www.kalakarawards.co.in