Type National Instituted 1968 First awardees Kannadasan Cash award 50,000 INR (US$790) | Category Indian Cinema First awarded 1968 Established 1968 Total awarded 38 | |
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Description Best lyrics of a song for the feature film for a year Medal Rajat Kamal (Silver Lotus) Awarded by Directorate of Film Festivals People also search for National Film Award for Best Editing | ||
The National Film Award for Best Lyrics (the Silver Lotus Award) is an honour presented annually at the National Film Awards by the Directorate of Film Festivals (DFF) to a lyricist who has composed the best song for films produced within the Indian film industry. The award was first introduced at the 16th National Film Awards in 1969. It was intermittently awarded till the 22nd National Film Awards (1975). From then on, no award was presented until the 32nd National Film Awards (1985). However, since 1985 every year the award has been presented with the exception of the 34th National Film Awards (1987). As of the 62nd National Film Awards (2015), the DFF has presented a total of 36 awards to 24 different lyricists.
Although the Indian film industry produces films in around 20 languages and dialects, the recipients of the award include those who have worked in seven major languages: Hindi (15 awards), Tamil (10 awards), Telugu (3 awards), Malayalam (3 awards), Bengali (2 awards), Kannada (2 awards) and Punjabi (1 award).
Tamil poet Kannadasan was the first recipient of the award. He won the prize for his work in the 1967 Tamil film Kuzhanthaikkaga. Vairamuthu (Tamil) is the most frequent winner in this category, having won the award six times. Javed Akhtar (Hindi) is the second-most frequent winner of the award. Four lyricists—Gulzar (Hindi), Swanand Kirkire (Hindi), Prasoon Joshi (Hindi) and Na. Muthukumar (Tamil)—have won the award on two occasions. Varun Grover is the most recent recipient, honoured for the song "Moh Moh Ke Dhaage" from Hindi film Dum Laga Ke Haisha at the 63rd National Film Awards.