Tabla Maestro Anindya Chatterjee also refused Padma award

Eminent Tabla player Pandit Anindya Chatterjee has declined to receive the Padma Shri honour.

Chatterjee is the second person from Bengal's vibrant musical world who was offered the Padma award this year and refused it.

The eminent percussionist, who has been `jugal bandis' (duets) with classical maestros like Pandit Ravi Shankar, Ustad Amjad Ali Khan and Ustad Ali Akbar Khan said on Wednesday he had recieved a phone call from Delhi on Tuesday seeking his consent to accepting the honour.

"However I politely declined. I said thank you but I am not ready to receive Padma Shri at this phase of my career. I have passed that phase," Chatterjee who received the Sangeet Natak Akademi award in 2002 said. A disciple of PanditJnan Prakash Ghosh, he has performed at the Rastrapati Bhavan in the past and was the youngest tabla player to perform in the British Parliament's House of Commons in 1989. Chatterjee said he would have accepted the honour with gratitude had it been conferred on him 10 yeats back. "Many of my contemporaries and juniors were given Padma Shri years ago. Anyway I said with all humbleness, that I am sorry but I cannot accept it (award) now." Singing legend Sandhya Mukherjee similarly turned down the offer of the Padma Shri Award offered to her by the Centre on Tuesday evening.

"At the age of 90, having regaled generations of listeners for around eight decades, she deserved something more," her daughter said. Besides Mukherjee and Chatterjee, CPI(M) leader and former West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee also turned down an offer to award him Padma Bhushan on Tuesday.