The highest honour of Akademi Fellowship (Akademi Ratna Sadasyata) was conferred on eminent vocalist Girija Devi, renowned dance guru Nataraja Ramakrishna, Dhrupad maestro Rahim Fahimuddin Dagar, and Mridangam vidwan T. K. Murthy. The winners of the Akademy Fellowship received purse money of Rupees three lakh, besides an angavastram and a tamrapatra. The Fellowship of the Akademi is a rare honour, which is bestowed on a very limited number of artists and scholars at a given time.
The honour of Akademi Ratna (Akademi Fellow) is restricted to 30 living personalities at any given point of time. In the field of music, nine artists received the award. The awardees are as follows:
Chhanu Lal Mishra and Yashpaul for Hindustani Vocal Music, Budhaditya Mukherjee (Sitar) and Nityanand Haldipur (Flute) for Hindustani Instrumental Music, Suguna Purushothaman and Mysore Nagamani Srinath for Carnatic Vocal music, Nagai R Muralidharan (Violin) and Srimushnam V. Rajarao (Mridangam) for Carnatic Instrumental Music, and M. V. Simhachala Sastry (Harikatha) for Other Major Traditions of Music.
In the field of dance, nine practitioners received the award. The winners are:
Malabika Mitra (Kathak), Kalamandalam Kombil Gopala Vasudevan Nair (Kathakali), Phanjoubam Iboton Singh (Manipuri), Rathna Kumar (Kuchipudi), Aruna Mohanty (Odissi), Manik Borbayan (Sattriya), Uttara Asha Coorlawala (Creative & Experimental), Kalamandalam Raman Chakyar (Other Major Traditions of Dance & Dance Theatre - Kutiyattam), and S Rajeswari (Music for Dance – Bharatanatyam)
In the field of theatre also, eight persons were honoured. They winners include playwrights D Vizai Bhaskar (Telugu) and Atamjit Singh (Punjabi), directors Veenapani Chawla and Urmil Kumar Thapaliyal, and actors Dilip Phabhavalkar, Banwari Taneja, Maya Krishna Rao and Swatilekha Sengupta.
Harbhajan Singh Namdhari, Nazeer Ahmad Khan Warsi & Naseer Ahmad Khan Warsi, Dwijen Mukherjee, T. Somasundaram, Krishna Kumari, Chandatai Jagdish Tiwadi (Bharud folk theatre of Maharashtra), K. Chinna Anjanamma were some of the artists to receive the award for their contribution to other Traditional/Folk/ Tribal Music/ Dance/ Theatre forms.
Ashok D. Ranade was honoured with the Award for his scholarship in music and Jaidev Taneja for his overall contribution to theatre.
The eminent representatives of music, dance and theatre honoured with the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for 2010 received purse money of Rupees one lakh, an angavastram and tamrapatra.
The Akademi Fellowship (Akademi Ratna Sadasyata) and Akademi Award (Akademi Puraskar) are the most coveted national honours conferred on performing artists, gurus and scholars of the performing arts. These honours are decided by the Akademi's General Council, the apex body consisting of eminent artists, scholars and nominees of the Government of India and of different States and Union Territories of India. The Sangeet Natak Akademi is the country’s apex cultural body for music, dance, theatre and the arts.
