Jorhat, Feb. 4: Barooah and Associates, a company of the tea industry doyen Hemendra Prasad Barooah, has announced the Kamal Kumari National Awards, 2012, which had been kept on hold because of the founder's death.

Dhruba Jyoti Dowerah, the group's general manager (tea estates), said, "A panel will select the winners for the years after 2012 but we would like to give away the 2012 awards as they had been selected by Barooah before he died in 2013."

Gautam Bhattacharya, the regional sales manager (packaging), said professor Dhiraj Bora, the director of the Institute of Plasma Research at Gandhinagar and chief scientist of the Indian Domestic Agency for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor Project, had been selected for the award in the science and technology category.

In art and culture, Pushpa Bhuyan, an expert in Xattriya, Bharata-natyam, Kathak, Kuchipudi and Manipuri and other forms, will be awarded posthumously as she passed away in October last year. The other art and culture (painting and sculpture award) would be given to Aisharjya Konwar of Tingkhong, a village in Assam. In the journalism category, Assamese magazine Prantik will be awarded.

The awards will be given away by filmmaker Jahnu Barua at Tocklai Tea Research Institute on February 9.