President presents Classical Tamil awards

President Pranab Mukherjee today presented the 'Presidential Awards for Classical Tamil' for the year 2009-10 and 2010-11 at a function at Rashtrapati Bhavan.
The Tolkappiyar Award for lifetime achievement in Classical Tamil was awarded to Iravatham Mahadevan and Tamizhannal Periakaruppan for 2009-10 and 2010-11 respectively.
The Kural Pitam Award was awarded to Jaroslav Vacek and John Ralston Marr for the same years.
The awards were also given to young Tamil scholars who have shown excellence and promise in teaching, research and publication in classical Tamil.
T Suresh, S Kalpana, R Chandrasekaran, Vaani Arivaalan, C Muthamizhselvan were conferred with the young scholars Awards for 2009-10 while for 2010-11 T Sangayya, A Jayakumar, A Mani, S Chidambaram and K Sundarapandian received the awards.

The awardees are presented with a citation and shawl apart from a cash award of Rs 5 lakh for Tolkappiyar and Kural Peedam awardees and Rs 1 lakh for young scholar awardees.
These awards have been instituted by the Central Institute of Classical Tamil functioning under the aegis of HRD Ministry.