| National Film Award for Best Lyrics | |
|---|---|
| Awarded for | Best lyrics of a song for the feature film for a year |
| Sponsored by | National Film Development Corporation of India |
| Formerly called | Lyric Writer of the Best Film Song on National Integration (1968–1972) |
| Reward(s) |
|
| First awarded | 1968 |
| Last awarded | 2021 |
| Most recent winner | Naushad Sadar Khan for "Salaami" from Fouja |
| Highlights | |
| Most awards | Vairamuthu (7) |
| Total awarded | 44 |
| First winner | Kannadasan |
The National Film Award for Best Lyrics is an honour presented annually at the National Film Awards by the National Film Development Corporation of India (NFDC) to a lyricist who has composed the best song for films produced within the Indian film industry.[1] The award was first introduced at the 16th National Film Awards in 1969. It was intermittently awarded until 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).
Although the Indian film industry produces films in around 20 languages and dialects,[1] the recipients of the award include those who have worked in seven major languages: Hindi (17 awards), Tamil (11 awards), Telugu, Bengali, Kannada and Malayalam (4 awards each), Punjabi and Haryanvi (1 award each).
Tamil poet Kannadasan was the first recipient of the award. He won the prize for his work in the 1967 Tamil film Kuzhanthaikkaga. The lyricist who won the most Rajat Kamal awards is Vairamuthu (Tamil) with seven wins,[2][3] followed by Javed Akhtar (Hindi) with five wins. Four lyricists: Gulzar (Hindi), Swanand Kirkire (Hindi), Prasoon Joshi (Hindi) and Na. Muthukumar (Tamil) have won the award on two occasions.