District Tamil development office to accept nominations for award

Coimbatore: In a first, the Tamil development department has from this year started seeking nominations from writers, poets and scholars, who have worked for the betterment of the Tamil language, for the Tamil Semmal Award through its district offices.
Earlier, they were asked to send in their nominations directly to the Tamil development department in Chennai. According to an official, nominees have been now directed to submit their forms to the Tamil development department offices in their districts, where officials would scrutinize them and forward them to Chennai.
In the earlier process, it was difficult for the district offices to maintain the record of people who had applied and been awarded, causing some hassle.
“Now that the nominees have been directed to submit forms through the district offices, the latter could maintain a registry of Tamil writers and scholars form the region. They could also scrutinize the applications and verify them locally to maintain quality of nominations,” said a source. This would also help officials keep track of scholars and writers from the region and, based on their merits, nominate them for other awards given by the department, the source said.
The award, which was instituted in 2015 by the state under the Tamil development department, seeks to honour those who have worked for the betterment of the language. One awardee is chosen from each district and the award would be given away to them on ‘Thiruvalluvar Day’, the second day of the Tamil month of Thai. The award consists of a cash prize of Rs25,000 and a citation.
From Coimbatore, six nominations have been sent this month for the award for the year 2018, the source said. After the award was given for the first time in 2015, awards for 2016 and 2017 were jointly given last year. The awards for 2018 would be announced this year.