1. 1965 – G. Sankara Kurup (Malayalam)
2. 1966 – Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay (Bengalisch)
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 (Assamesisch)
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 (Tamil)
14. 1976 – Ashapoorna Devi (Bengalisch)
15. 1977 – K. S. Narasimhaswamy (Kannada)
16. 1978 – S. H. Vatsyayan „Agyeya“ (Hindi)
17. 1979 – Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya (Assamesisch)
18. 1980 – S. K. Pottekkatt (Malayalam)
19. 1981 – Amrita Pritam (Punjabi)
20. 1982 – Sitakant Mahapatra (Odia)
21. 1983 – Masti Venkatesha Iyengar (Kannada)
22. 1984 – Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai (Malayalam)
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 (Bengalisch)
30. 1992 – Nirmal Verma (Hindi)
31. 1993 – Girish Karnad (Kannada)
32. 1994 – U. R. Ananthamurthy (Kannada)
33. 1995 – M. T. Vasudevan Nair (Malayalam)
34. 1996 – Mahasweta Devi (Bengalisch)
35. 1997 – Sachchidananda Hirananda Vatsyayan „Agyeya“ (Hindi)
36. 1998 – Girish Chandra Sen (Bengali)
37. 1999 – Nissim Ezekiel (Englisch)
38. 2000 – Indira Goswami (Assamesisch)
39. 2001 – O. N. V. Kurup (Malayalam)
40. 2002 – Govind Chandra Pandey (Hindi)
41. 2003 – Deepa Mehta (Hindi)
42. 2004 – K. J. Yesudas (Malayalam)
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 (Bengalisch)
55. 2017 – Krishna Sobti (Hindi)
56. 2018 - Amit Chaudhuri (Englisch)
57. 2019 – Akkitham Achuthan Namboothiri (Malayalam)
58. 2020 – Chiranjit (Bengali)
59. 2021 – Damodar Mauzo (Konkani)
60. 2022 - Amitav Ghosh (Englisch)