1. 1965 - G. Sankara Kurup (Malayalam)
2. 1966 - Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay (Bengaals)
3. 1967 – Umashankar Joshi (Gujarati)
4. 1967 - KV Puttappa (Kannada)
5. 1968 - Sumitranandan Pant (Hindi)
6. 1969 – Firaq Gorakhpuri (Urdu)
7. 1970 - Viswanatha Satyanarayana (Telugu)
8. 1971 – Bishnu Dey (Assamees)
9. 1972 – Ramdhari Singh Dinkar (Hindi)
10. 1973 - DR Bendre (Kannada)
11. 1973 - Gopinath Mohanty (Odia)
12. 1974 – Vishnu Vaman Shirwadkar (Marathi)
13. 1975 - PV Akilandam (Tamil)
14. 1976 - Ashapoorna Devi (Bengaals)
15. 1977 - KS Narasimhaswamy (Kannada)
16. 1978 - SH Vatsyayan 'Agyeya' (Hindi)
17. 1979 - Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya (Assamees)
18. 1980 - SK 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 (Bengaals)
30. 1992 – Nirmal Verma (Hindi)
31. 1993 – Girish Karnad (Kannada)
32. 1994 - UR Ananthamurthy (Kannada)
33. 1995 - MT Vasudevan Nair (Malayalam)
34. 1996 - Mahasweta Devi (Bengaals)
35. 1997 - Sachchidananda Hirananda Vatsyayan 'Agyeya' (Hindi)
36. 1998 - Girish Chandra Sen (Bengaals)
37. 1999 - Nissim Ezechiël (Engels)
38. 2000 - Indira Goswami (Assamees)
39. 2001 - ONV Kurup (Malayalam)
40. 2002 – Govind Chandra Pandey (Hindi)
41. 2003 - Deepa Mehta (Hindi)
42. 2004 - KJ Yesudas (Malayalam)
43. 2005 – Kunwar Narain (Hindi)
44. 2006 – Ravindra Kelekar (Marathi)
45. 2007 - OP 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 (Bengaals)
55. 2017 – Krishna Sobti (Hindi)
56. 2018 - Amit Chaudhuri (Engels)
57. 2019 – Akkitham Achuthan Namboothiri (Malayalam)
58. 2020 - Chiranjit (Bengaals)
59. 2021 – Damodar Mauzo (Konkani)
60. 2022 - Amitav Ghosh (Engels)