1. 1965 - G. Sankara Kurup (malajalami)
2. 1966 - Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay (bengali)
3. 1967 - Umashankar Joshi (gujarati)
4. 1967 - K. V. Puttappa (kannada)
5. 1968 - Sumitranandan Pant (hindi)
6. 1969 - Firaq Gorakhpuri (urdu)
7. 1970 - Viswanatha Satyanarayana (telugu)
8. 1971 - Bishnu Dey (Assami)
9. 1972 – Ramdhari Singh Dinkar (hindi)
10. 1973 – D. R. Bendre (kannada)
11. 1973 - Gopinath Mohanty (Odia)
12. 1974 - Vishnu Vaman Shirwadkar (marathi)
13. 1975 - P. V. Akilandam (tamili)
14. 1976 - Ashapoorna Devi (bengali)
15. 1977 - K. S. Narasimhaswamy (Kannada)
16. 1978 - S. H. Vatsyayan "Agyeya" (hindi)
17. 1979 - Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya (Assami)
18. 1980 – S. K. Pottekkatt (malajalami)
19. 1981 - Amrita Pritam (Punjabi)
20. 1982 - Sitakant Mahapatra (Odia)
21. 1983 - Masti Venkatesha Iyengar (kannada)
22. 1984 - Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai (malajalami)
23. 1985 - Phanishwarnath "Renu" (hindi)
24. 1986 - Sachidananda Routray (Odia)
25. 1987 - Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar (marathi)
26. 1988 - C. Narayana Reddy (telugu)
27. 1989 - Qurratulain Hyder (urdu)
28. 1990 - Vinda Karandikar (marathi)
29. 1991 – Subhash Mukhopadhyay (bengali)
30. 1992 - nirmal verma (hindi)
31. 1993 - Girish Karnad (Kannada)
32. 1994 - U. R. Ananthamurthy (Kannada)
33. 1995 - M. T. Vasudevan Nair (malajalami)
34. 1996 – Mahasweta Devi (bengali)
35. 1997 - Sachchidananda Hirananda Vatsyayan "Agyeya" (hindi)
36. 1998 - Girish Chandra Sen (bengali)
37. 1999 - Nissim Ezekiel (englanti)
38. 2000 - Indira Goswami (Assami)
39. 2001 – O. N. V. Kurup (malajalami)
40. 2002 - Govind Chandra Pandey (hindi)
41. 2003 - Deepa Mehta (hindi)
42. 2004 – K. J. Yesudas (malajalami)
43. 2005 - Kunwar Narain (hindi)
44. 2006 - Ravindra Kelekar (marathi)
45. 2007 – O.P. Bhatnagar (hindi)
46. 2008 - Akhil Katha (hindi)
47. 2009 – Pratibha Ray (Odia)
48. 2010 – Chandrashekhara Kambar (Kannada)
49. 2011 – Pratibha Ray (Odia)
50. 2012 – Ravindra Kelekar (marathi)
51. 2013 - Kedarnath Singh (hindi)
52. 2014 - Bhalchandra Nemade (marathi)
53. 2015 – Raghunath Chaudhari (Odia)
54. 2016 – Shankha Ghosh (bengali)
55. 2017 - Krishna Sobti (hindi)
56. 2018 - Amit Chaudhuri (englanti)
57. 2019 – Akkitham Achuthan Namboothiri (malajalami)
58. 2020 – chiranjit (bengali)
59. 2021 – Damodar Mauzo (Konkani)
60. 2022 – Amitav Ghosh (englanti)