Cuttack, Aug. 8: A public interest litigation filed in Orissa High Court has challenged the nomination of Odia author Bilasini Mohanty’s book Anabruta Andhakar for Kendriya Sahitya Akademi Prize for Translation–2013.

Anabruta Andhakar is a collection of 50 short stories of Pakistani writer Sadaat Hassan Manto translated from Urdu to Odia. Kaka Jyotsna Das, a social activist based at Kuchinda in Sambalpur, filed the PIL, seeking quashing of the nomination citing violation of rules for the award.

The division bench of Justice Pradip Mohanty and Justice Biswajit Mohanty on Wednesday issued notices to secretary Union ministry of tourism and culture, author Bilasini Mohanty and seven others to reply within three weeks.

Among those, named in the PIL, included president and secretary of National Academy of Letters, the language advisory board (Odia) of Sahitya Akademi, higher education department of Union ministry of human resource development and members of the selection committee for Sahitya Akademi Prize for Translation (Odia) – 2013.

The nomination was done by a three-member selection committee consisting of Ajay Kumar Patnaik, Bijaya Kumar Nanda and Santosh K. Ratha.

The petition alleged that the nomination of Anabruta Andhakar violated Rule 2(1) of the Rules for Sahitya Akademi Prize for Translation.

The rule says: “The selected book for receiving the prize for translation must be a full, unabridged and readable translation of the original work which must be a work in any of the language recognised by the Akademi”.

“The book Anabruta Andhakar is not an unabridged translation of the original author but is a collection of translation of different stories from various books of Sadaat Hassan Manto. Thus there has been clear deviation of Rule 2(1),” the petitioner contends.

“Further, neither Bilasini Mohanty knows Urdu language nor the jury members have any knowledge in Urdu language. The rules, of course, prescribe that the book can be taken into consideration if the translation is made from any link language, but it is not known from which link language the book Anabruta Andhakar is translated,” the petitioner alleged.

“One of the precondition was that the original publisher must be an Indian and non-Indian author’s book is not eligible for inclusion in the list of selection for receiving the award. Admittedly, Saaat Hassan Manto , the original author is a non-Indian (Pakistani). Hence, the translation work from his book was not eligible for being included in the list of books placed before the jury for selection to receive the award,” the petitioner further alleged.