The annual award given in the name of SR Puttanna Kanagal, Dr Rajakumar and Dr Vishnuvardhana award was announced on Thursday by Karnataka Information department.

Veteran director and mentor for so many directors KV Raju of 30 plus films, top actress of yesteryears in Kannada, Telugu and Tamil Adhavani Lakshmi Devi and K Chinnappa poster designer of over 4000 films gets the respective awards for 2016. All of them have put in more than four decades of service in the cinema industry.

A citation, Rs.2 lakh cash award and trophy will be presented to all the three seniors on April 24, Karnataka State awards presentation day that is also birth anniversary of Dr Rajakumar. The government of Karnataka announcement in the last year was that state awards would be presented on Dr Rajakumar birth anniversary day. This is happening from this year.

Twenty plus awards that is lead by Shruthi Hariharan as best actress and Achyuth Kumar as best actor also will be presented in a gala function.

Smt Adhavani Lakshmi Devi commenced her innings from Bhakta Vijaya and went on to act in Telugu and Tamil films. KV Raju directed thirty films and he is mentor for so many in the industry. KV Chinnappa started his career six decades ago with hand written poster paintings.

Besides the three prestigious awards a book written by Muttina Haara, that was a column in a newspaper daily gets the state award and Anala a short film is picked for an award.