Popular actress and Bharata Natyam exponent Vyjayantimala bagged the Akkineni Award for the year 2008. The Akkineni International Trust founder Akkineni Nageswara Rao announced this at a media briefing in Annapurna Studios on Saturday.
He says, ‘We are felicitating the artistes who did yeoman service to the film industry with this Akkineni Award every year. After I was awarded Dadasaheb Phalke award, I got an idea as to why I should not institute an award. From then onwards, I started allocating a part of my earnings and after the money accumulated to Rs 1 crore. We kept as a corpus fund and started the foundation. From then onwards we are felicitating popular artistes with Akkineni Award. Earlier, we used to present Rs 3 lakhs, a citation while felicitating the artiste. We increased the cash award to Rs 4 lakh from last year. Earlier, Devanand, Shabana Ajmi, Anjali Devi bagged these awards. This year, we selected Vyjayantimala for the award. It would be presented to the artiste at a function to be held at Jubilee Hall in Hyderabad on January 10. Several popular film personalities would attend the event.’
