Jamshedpur, March 29: The Sahitya Akademi has expressed concern at the dwindling number of entries it received from Santhali authors for the annual awards it confers on literary personalities for the promotion of language and literature.

The Sahitya Akademi, an autonomous organisation under the Union ministry of culture, had received only 11 entries in Santhal category for last year?s awards.

The 2005 award in the Santhali category was conferred on renowned writer Jadumani Besra. The Santhali author hails from Jharkhand but is working with the Indian Railways at Kharagpur.

Earlier, the Bhasa Samman award was bagged by Doman Sahu of the Santhal Pargana. The academy?s deputy secretary, Brajendra Tripathi, told The Telegraph that the academy would organise more seminars, interaction sessions and events in Jharkhand to give impetus to the only tribal language that has been included in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution in 2003.

He arrived here from New Delhi to participate in two events for the promotion of Santhali and Maithili.

?Last year, the academy received only 11 entries for extraordinary work done in the Santhal language category. The number is much lesser than what the academy receives from the 23 other languages included in the Eight Schedule,? informed Tripathi, who was the chief guest at a programme organised by the academy and the Santhali Sanskritik Parishad, Jamshedpur.

Santhali scholar and historian Digambar Hansda also addressed the gathering at the event, Men and Books, at Karandih-based Lal Bahadur Shashtri Memorial College