Sitar maestro Pandit Ravi Shankar to get Tagore award

New Delhi: President Pranab Mukherjee will confer the Tagore Award for Cultural Harmony posthumously on sitar maestro Ravi Shankar at the Rashtrapati Bhavan Thursday, the culture ministry said in a statement.

The award will be given to Ravi Shankar`s wife Sukanya Shankar in the presence of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Minister of Culture Chandresh Kumari Katoch and other dignitaries. The award carries a cheque of Rs.2 crore. It was instituted as part of the commemoration of the 150th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore and an announcement to this effect was made by then finance minister Pranab Mukherjee in his budget speech in 2011. The jury, under the chairmanship of the prime minister, selected Ravi Shankar as the first recipient of the Tagore Award in recognition of his outstanding contribution to cultural harmony and universal values. IANS