K Viswanath – Veteran filmmaker and actor Kasinadhuni Viswanath has been conferred Dadasaheb Phalke award for 2016 by the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting. Viswanath was born in February 1930 in Andhra Pradesh. As a director he has made fifty films on varied themes of art, music and dance. In 1992, he received Padmashri Award for his contribution to film making. He has also won 5 National Awards, 20 Nandi Awards of Andhra Pradesh government, 10 Filmfare Awards including Lifetime Achievement Award.
Prafulla Samantra – Social activist Prafulla Samantra was announced one among six winners of the Goldman Environmental Prize for his “historic 12-year legal battle that affirmed the indigenous Dongria Kondh’s land rights and protected the Niyamgiri Hills from a massive, open-pit aluminum ore mine.” Prafulla Samantra is a trained lawyer and has been involved in activism since the Jayprakash Narayan-movement. He was an iconic leader responsible for rallying tribes in Niyamgiri region of Odisha and made use of legal provisions to block mining-to-metals conglomerate Vedanta from setting up a bauxite mine there. Samantara is only the sixth Indian to win the prize after Medha Patkar, M.C. Mehta, Rasheeda Bi, Champaran Shukla and Ramesh Agrawal since 1990 when the award was first instituted.