Six prominent personalities from the Northeast, including National Award winning Assamese filmmaker Jahnu Barua and ‘Forest Man of India’ Jadav Payeng, were on Sunday chosen for this year’s Padma awards.
While Barua, a former Padma Shri, was named for the Padma Bhushan, Assam’s tribal environmentalist Payeng, noted Assamese writer Lakshmi Nandan Bora, Manipur’s medicine expert Sarungbam Bimola Kumari Devi, musician Neil Herbert Nonkynrih from Meghalaya and social worker H. Thegtse Rinpoche from Arunachal Pradesh will get the Padma Shri.
Barua has won 10 National Film Awards and over 25 awards at international festivals. In 2003, he was given the Padma Shri for his contribution to cinema.
Payeng, 56, single-handedly planted nearly 1,400 acres of forest on a Brahmaputra sandbar near Majuli, known as Molai Kathonibari. He is a resident of Aruna Sapori at Kokilamukh in Jorhat district.
Nonkynrih is the founder of the famous Shillong Choir, which had performed for President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle during their first visit to India in 2010.
Bora, a former president of Axom Xahitya Xabha, is a novelist and short story writer with around 60 books to his credit.
Devi, Chief Medical Officer of Imphal West, has been given the Padma Shri for her contribution to society as a medical professional.
Rinpoche is associated with the Tawang monastery in Arunachal Pradesh.
