6 Oct : Kishor Kumar of Trivandrum and Girish J. Kingar of Indore have bagged the first prize for colour and black and white section respectively in the 21st National Photo Contest organized by the Photo Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India. Keeping in sync with the theme of the year 2008, declared as the International Year of Planet Earth by the United Nations, the theme of National Photo Contest was “Life and Environment” this year.
Observance of The Year of Planet Earth is to go a long way in not only in engaging peoples’ imaginations but also enhancing their knowledge about our Planet. It will enable them to use this knowledge to make the earth safer, healthier and wealthier place for the posterity. This Photo Contest is a modest contribution of the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting in the global efforts towards raising people’s awareness on this issue of vital concern for human beings.
The second prize in colour segment went to Amit Fadtare of Indore and in black and white to Sandipan Majumdar of Kolkata. Ranjan Basu of Delhi and Avijit Dutta of Kolkata received the third prize in colour and the black and white category respectively.
A total number of 2206 photographs in black and white as well as colour were received from 506 entrants from 25 States/U.T. (Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Chandigarh, Chattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Manipur, Mizoram, Orissa, Puducherry, Punjab, Rajasthan, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and West Bengal).
A five-member Jury comprising Shri O.P. Sharma, Noted Pictorialist, Shri Anil Risal Singh, Photo Artist & President of Lucknow Camera Club, Shri T.S. Nagarajan, a veteran and eminent Photo Journalist and former Director of Photo Division, Smt. Stuti Kacker, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and Shri Debatosh Sengupta, Director, Photo Division considered the entries and selected the three main prizes as well as 10 commendation prizes in each section.
The recipients of the commendation prizes are S/Shri Shyamal Kumar Roy, Writwik Chakraborty, Chinmoy Bhattacharjee, Aniruddha Pal, Sudip Roychoudhury, Jayanta Shaw, Gautam Basu, Suman Chatterjee and Shankar Mondal of Kolkata, Adit Agarwala of Delhi, D.V. Jadhav of Dewas, P. Karunkakaran, P. Musthafa of Kerala, T. Srinivasa Reddy of Vijayawada, B.S. Sondhi of Haryana, Nitin Khatri of Indore, Chetan Soni of Madhya Pradesh and Suresh Parekh of Vadodara.
The Jury Members selected additional 98 pictures, 23 black and white and 75 colour in addition to the 26 prize winning pictures for display in the Exhibition.