Agra, Apr 11 (IANS): Central Hindi Institute Director N.K. Pandey on Tuesday announced the names of 26 writers from different categories for the prestigious Hindi Sevi Samman Awards.

The awardees will receive Rs 5 lakh each, a citation and a shawl from President Pranab Mukherjee at a ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan in May, Pandey told IANS.

The Ganesh Shankar Vidhyarthi Award for Hindi journalism will be awarded to Rahul Dev and Baldev Bhai Sharma.

Professor S. Shesharatnam (Andhra Pradesh), M. Govind Rajan (Tamil Nadu), Harmahendra Singh Bedi (Punjab) and H. Subadani Devi (Manipur) have been selected from non-Hindi speaking states for their contribution to the Hindi language.

Foreign Hindi writers selected for the award are Professor Fujii Takeshi (Japan) and Professor Gabriela Nik Ilieva (New York) while the Non-Resident Indians (NRI) who get the awards are Pushpita Avasthi (Netherlands) and Padmesh Gupt (London).

The Union Human Resource Development Ministry instituted the Hindi Sevi Samman in 1989. More than a hundred Hindi writers have received the prestigious awards till now.