[1][2] The Sahitya Akademi supports work in the following 24 languages, 22 of which are included in the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of India, alongside English and Rajasthani: Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, English, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Odia, Punjabi, Rajasthani, Sanskrit, Santhali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu.

The idea of constituting a National Academy of Letters in India was considered by the colonial British government, and in 1944 a proposal from the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal for the formation of a 'National Cultural Trust' was, in principle, accepted.

Munshi, Zakir Husain, Umashankar Joshi, Mahadevi Varma, D. V. Gundappa, Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, and was presided over by the then-Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.

A ceremony was held in the Indian Parliament's Central Hall, with speeches by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan.

This concern was echoed by the Prime Minister, who noted that, "...it is an honour to be the President of an organisation which includes it in its fold the eminent writers of India in various languages.

[25] Subsequent presidents of the Sahitya Akademi have included S. Radhakrishnan (1958) who succeeded Jawaharlal Nehru after serving as the vice-president along with him; Zakir Hussain (1963); Suniti Kumar Chatterjee (1967); K.R.

Srinivasa Iyengar (1969, and re-elected in 1973); Umashankar Joshi (1978); Vinayaka Krishna Gokak (1983); Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya (1988); U. R. Ananthamurthy (1993); Ramakanta Rath (1998); and Gopi Chand Narang (2003).

[29] The Akademi has never elected a female president although, Mahasweta Devi in 2003 and Pratibha Ray in 2018 unsuccessfully contested against Gopi Chand Narang and Chandrashekar Kambara respectively for the position.

[32] The constitution of the Sahitya Akademi provides that it shall be run by three authorities — a General Council, an Executive Board, and a Finance Committee.

[38] The finance committee's role is to prescribe the limit for total expenditure by the Sahitya Akademi in a financial year, and consider and recommend budget estimates to the executive board.

The finance committee consists of a financial advisor, a nominee from the Government of India, a representative each from the General Council and Executive Board, and the vice-president of the Akademi.

Amongst other things, it publishes the National Bibliography of Indian Literature (NBIL), an ongoing selective index of publications in 24 languages.

[43] In addition, the Sahitya Akademi has published the Collected Works of Maulana Azad in Urdu and Telugu, and critical editions of books by Kalidasa, Bankimchandra Chatterjee, and Rabindranath Tagore.

Attendees included Aldous Huxley, Martin Wickremesinghe, Jean Guehenno, Zaki Naguib Mahmoud, Isaiah Berlin, and Louis Untermeyer[49] as well as Amrita Pritam, Ramdhari Sinha Dinkar, Rayaprolu Subba Rao, and Premendra Mitra.

Godakumbra, Kapila Vatsyayan, Camille Bulke and Umashankar Joshi, presented 44 papers on Ramayana traditions, which were published by the Akademi in a commemorative volume.

[54] The most recent lecture was delivered by Chandrashekhar Shankar Dharmadhikari, an author, lawyer, and former judge in the Bombay High Court on 17 February 2016.

Notable speakers in the past have included film-maker Adoor Gopalakrishnan, journalist Dilip Padgaonkar, lawyer Laxmi Mall Singhvi, and former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

Sahitya Akademi conferres annually the Yuva Puraskar to young writers (under 35 years) of outstanding works in one of the 24 major Indian languages.

"[72] Many controversial appointments of unqualified candidates to key positions at the Sahitya Akademi, done during Gopi Chand Narang's time, continue unchallenged to this day.

Khurshid Alam and Mrignayani Gupta, both dismissed in 2004 for presenting counterfeit degree certificates, have made a backdoor entry and have been subsequently promoted to higher positions.

and PhD degrees while being employed as deputy secretary (administration) at the Sahitya Akademi without availing a single day's leave, are fake and fraudulent.

The ground-list of books (from which the jury members make two short-lists and the final selection for the award) is supposed to be made by the General Council.

But the books are provided to this council by the bureaucrats and employees of the Akademi who are allegedly unqualified to make any kind of literary selection.