Veteran photojournalist Sipra Das was on Tuesday conferred with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the National Photography Awards given by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.  Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting L Murugan also conferred the Professional Photographer of the Year Award on Sasi Kumar Ramachandran.  Arun Saha won the Amateur Photographer of the Year Award. 

The themes for the awards in Professional and Amateur category were ‘Life and Water', and ‘Cultural Heritage of India' respectively.  Speaking on the occasion, Murugan said the winners come from diverse professional backgrounds but what binds them is their passion for photography.  The Special Mention Award in the professional category was conferred on Dipjyoti Banik, Manish Kumar Chauhan, R S Gopakumar, Sudipto Das and Umesh Harishchandra Nikam. 

The Special Mention Award in the amateur category went to C S Sreeranj, Mohit Wadhawan, Ravishankar S L, Subhadip Bose and Tharun Adurugatla.  The jury for the eighth edition of the National Photography Awards was chaired by Vijay Kranti and had Jagdish Yadav, Ajay Aggarwal, K Madhavan Pillai, Ashima Narain and Sanjiv Misra as members. 

The Lifetime Achievement Award carried a cash prize of Rs 3,00,000; the Professional Photographer of the Year and Amateur Photographer of the Year awards carry a cash prize of Rs 1,00,000 and Rs 75,000, respectively.  The five Special Mention Awards in both professional and amateur categories have a cash prize of Rs 50,000 and Rs 30,000 each respectively. 

Apurva Chandra, Secretary, Ministry of I&B, said that the National Photography Awards were an effort to nurture the immense effort made by the photographers of the country.  Chandra recommended that government flagship schemes can be included as a category of awards in future.