Lok Sanskriti Shodh Sansthan announces names; felicitation ceremony to be held in Lucknow on Sharad Purnima
Lucknow, Sept 2026 : Renowned singer Rekha Mishra, Anuj Srivastava, Alka Chaturvedi, Dr Kusum Verma, Rupali Srivastava, Deveshwari Panwar and Babita Singh will be conferred the Mirabai Folk Music Honour 2026.
The names were announced following a meeting of the selection committee chaired by Lok Sanskriti Shodh Sansthan president Jitesh Srivastava. The felicitation ceremony will be held on October 26 at the Uttar Pradesh Press Club in Lucknow as part of a Lok Chaupal organised on the occasion of Mirabai Jayanti.
Dr Sudha Dwivedi, secretary of the institute, said Mirabai Jayanti is observed on Sharad Purnima. The institute has been presenting the honour since 2020 to recognise contributions to folk music and culture.
In 2020, the honour was presented to Dr Sudhakar Adeeb, Dr Ram Bahadur Mishra, Dr Amita Dubey, Parmanand Pandey, Dr Bharti Singh, Jyoti Kiran Sinha and Adarsh Maurya.
In 2021, the recipients were Hashim Raza Jalalpuri, Shashilekha Singh, Vimal Pant, Padma Gidwani and Daya Chaturvedi.
The 2022 awardees were Mukta Chatterjee, Vineet Sinha, Sharda Pandey, Aruna Upadhyay and Shashank Sharma.
In 2023, the honour was conferred on Indu Saraswat, Dr Sarojini Saxena, Rashmi Upadhyay, Rekha Agarwal, Abha Shukla, Sarita Agarwal and Antara Bhattacharya.
The 2024 recipients were Bhavatarini Sundaram Iyer, Neeta Gupta, Soumya Goyal, Anjali Singh, Madhu Srivastava, Prof Usha Bajpai and Bhavana Garwal.
In 2025, the institute honoured Dr Mukta Varshney, Asha Srivastava, Manu Rai, Aparna Singh, Sushma Prakash, Shikha Srivastava and Dipali Sharma.
The institute said the annual honour has been instituted to acknowledge individuals contributing to the preservation, promotion and enrichment of folk music and cultural traditions. The 2026 felicitation ceremony will bring together the newly selected awardees and members of the cultural community in Lucknow.
