NEW DELHI: Sahitya Akademi was forced to cancel a press conference called by it on Thursday to announce its annual literary awards following a directive from the Union Ministry of Culture.

The announcement was put on hold after the culture ministry' directives as it was reportedly upset with the selection process.

The Akademi is an autonomous body under the ministry.

The press conference was scheduled to be held at 3 p.m. in Delhi after a meeting of the Executive Board of the literary body, which cleared the awardees. But minutes before it began, the government representatives sought to defer the announcement and asked the board not to go ahead with the press conference.

However, the board conveyed its displeasure citing its autonomous status.

"After the Board finalised awardees, the Government representatives asked to put the announcement on hold. They said that they wanted to check awardees. Then the board said if there are some issues and there should some evidence to substantiate the claims. The representatives were also told that a decision has been taken and it just required a go-ahead," said members of Akademi, on the condition of anonymity.

No immediate response from the ministry is available.

President of Akademi, Madhav Kaushik, didn't respond to calls and text messages sent to elicit his response. 

According to sources, the government representatives wanted to postpone the announcement, stating that the ministry intends to make some changes in the rules for awards. They also cited a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), according to which, restructuring of awards should be undertaken in consultation with the ministry.

"The ministry also said that until the restructuring process is formally approved, no award declaration should be made without its prior approval while the board was of the opinion that approval may be granted subsequently. Because of the development, press conference was cancelled, which was quite embarrassing," said members.

The Sahitya Akademi confers annual awards for literary works in 24 Indian languages.