 To commemorate the 150 years of the First War of India's Independence and 60 years of Independence, the Photo Division recently organised the 20th National Photo Contest on the theme &quot;Spirit of Independent India&quot;.<br /> <br /> The jury members selected 83 prints from black and white and colour in addition to 26 award winning pictures for display at the exhibition. <br /> <br /> Vivek Desai of Ahmedabad bagged the first prize for both sections (Black and White and Colour). <br /> <br /> Anirudha Pal and Supriya Biswas of Kolkata got the second prize and Girish J. Kingar and Upendra Upadhyay of Indore got the third prizes in Black and White and Colour section respectively. <br /> <br /> Ten commendation awards for Black and White photographs have been announced for T. Srinivasa Reddy of Andhra Pradesh, Hemendra A.Shah of Ahmedabad, Prasenjit Dhar of Asansol, R.V.Shiddhaye of Mumbai, Puranjit Gangopadhyay, Chinmoy Bhattacharjee, Dines Mukherjee and Avijit Datta of Kolkata and O.P.Soni of Indore. <br /> <br /> The commendation awards in Colour section have been announced for Nitin Khatri of Indore, Subhashis Basu, Partha Pratim Das, Jayanta Shaw, Partha Samal, Supriya Biswas of Kolkata, Devendra Sharma of Ratlam, Pravin Barnale, Ashu Patel, of Indore and Ambuj Soni of Dewas, Madhya Pradesh.<br /> <br /> A total of 1157 photographs were received from 294 participants from 16 States.  <br /> <br /> The first prize carries a cash prize of Rs. 20,000, the second prize Rs. 15,000 and the third prize Rs. 10,000. The commendation prizes carry Rs. 2,000 each alongwith a citation and a memento. 