1965 Shankara Kurup Odakkuzhal Malayalam 1966 Tarashankar Bandopadhyaya Ganadevta Bengali 1967 Dr. T.V. Puttappa Sri Ramayana Darshanam Kannada 1967 Uma Shankar Joshi Nishitha Gujarati 1968 Sumitra Nandan Pant Chidambara Hindi 1969 Firaq Gorakhpuri Gul-e-Naghma Urdu 1970 Vishwanath Satyanarauan Ramayana Kalpavrikshamu Telugu 1971 Bishnu Dey Smriti Satta Bhavishyat Bengali 1972 Ramdhari Singh Dinkar Urvashi Hindi 1973 Dattatreya Ramachandaran Bendre Nakutanti Kannada 1973 Gopinath Mohanty Mattimatal Oriya 1974 Vishnu Sakaram Khandekar Yayati Marathi 1975 P.V.Akilandam Chitttrappavai Tamil 1976 Asha Purna Devi Pratham Pratisruti Bengali 1977 K.Shivaram Karanth Mukkajjiya Kanasugalu Kannada 1978 S.H.V. Ajneya Kitni Navon Men Kitni Bar Hindi 1979 Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya Mrityunjay Assamese 1980 S.K. Pottekkatt Oru Desattinte Katha Malayalam 1981 Amrita Pritam Kagaj te Canvas Punjabi 1982 Mahadevi Varma Hindi 1983 Masti Venkatesh Ayengar Kannada 1984 Takazhi Sivashankara Pillai Malayalam 1985 Pannalal Patel Gujarati 1986 Sachidanand Rout Roy Oriya 1987 Vishnu Vaman Shirwadkar Kusumagraj Marathi 1988 Dr. C. Narayanan Reddy Telugu 1989 Qurratulain Hyder Urdu 1990 V.K. Gokak Kannada 1991 Subash Mukhopadhyay Bengali 1992 Niresh Mehta Hindi 1993 Sitakant Mahapatra Oriya 1994 U.R. Ananthamurthy Kannada 1995 M.T. Vasudevan Nair Malayalam 1996 Mahasweta Devi Bengali
From 1982, the award was given for overall contribution to literature