New Delhi, Jun 23 (IANS): Regional language poets dominated the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar 2017 with sixteen books of poetry along with five short stories, two biographies and one essay that won the award.

The award would be presented in the form of a casket containing an engraved copper-plaque and a cheque of Rs 50,000 to the awardees at a special function on November 14.

Pratim Baruah was honoured with the award for his Assamese poem while Bijit Gwra Ramchiary bagged the award for his Bodo writings.

Other poets who got the award were Rajinder Ranjha (Dogri), Taro Sindik Jha (Hindi), Kh.Krishnamohan Singha (Manipuri), Nighat Sahiba (Kashmiri) and Amey Vishram Naik (Konkani).

Besides, there was Chandan Kumar Jha for Maithili, Saran Muskan for Nepali, Suryasnata Tripathy for Odia, Harman for Punjabi, Hemchandra Belwal for Sanskrit, Maina Tudu for Santali, Rekha Sachdev Pohani for Sindhi, J. Jayabharathi for Tamil and Mercy Margaret for Telugu.

Author Manu S. Pillai was awarded for English category and Rasheed Ashraf Khan for Urdu for their biographies while author Rahul Kosambi bagged the award for his essay.

Bengali author Shamik Ghosh was honoured in the short story category while author Rami Mori bagged the award for writing in Gujarati.

Other authors who have also been conferred in the short story category were Shanthi K. Appana for Kannada, Aswathy Sasikumar for Malayalam and Ummed Dhaniya for Rajasthani.