Mumbai: To commemorate the 60th Anniversary of India’s Independence, the Government of India will confer the One Time Award for Life Time Achievement to four film personalities – Dilip Kumar, Tapan Sinha, Lata Mangeshkar and Saroja Devi.

In the first of the conferment, Sinha would be presented the One Time Award for Life Time Achievement in the field of film direction. In view of his failing health, Gopal Krishna Gandhi, the Governor of West Bengal will confer the Award on Tapan Sinha on 20 June at his residence in Kolkata. This will be done in the presence of Union Minister of information and broadcasting P R Dasmunsi.

The Award citation underlines Sinha’s "…amazingly down-to-earth cinematic depiction of the struggles of the common man. His reputation as an uncompromising filmmaker, a celluloid iconoclast, puts him in a class of his own. A storyteller par excellence, Tapan Sinha’s films such as Kabuliwala (1957), Haatey Bazaare (1967), Safed Haathi (1977) are well-crafted in terms of structure and technique, exhibiting his virtuosity and capability to handle a range of subjects with equal élan and sensitivity."