When the announcement of conferring Padma Shri award on Prof. Ram Yatna Shukla, President of Kashi Vidvat Parishad, Kashi's scholarly society was overwhelmed. This was bound to happen because even today at the age of 89, he is surrounded by students at his residence in Sankuldhara Pokhara and keeps commenting and giving lectures on the sources of Sanskrit grammar.
Pro. Ram Yatna Shukla was born in 1932 in a village in the Bhadohi district. His father Ram Niranjan Shukla was also a Sanskrit scholar. He received the education of Vedanta Shastra from Dharma Samrat Swami Karpatri and Swami Chaitanya Bharati, Mimamsa from Hariram Shukla and Philosophy and Yoga from Pandit Ramchandra Shastri. Pro. Shukla has worked as Acharya in BHU Sanskrit Vidya Dharmavidya Faculty. He has also decorated the post of Acharya and President of Grammar Department in Sampurnanand Sanskrit Vishwavidyalaya.
Even today, they are doing wonderful service to Sanskrit. They are trying to give the knowledge of Sanskrit to the new generation by making video recordings of Ashtadhyayi. For this, he has also been awarded Vishwa Bharati, the top Sanskrit language award in 2015. They are presently giving free Sanskrit education to young graduates to promote Sanskrit.
This year three scholars from Kashi were selected for the Padma Shri award. In this, apart from Prof. Ram Yatna Shukla, the developing farmers Chandrashekhar Singh and Late Shree Jagdish Chowdhary were selected. However, there was a lot of enthusiasm among the learned people of Kashi with the joy of getting three more Padma honours in Kashi's part. However, all three names had already been announced earlier. In this context, after the selection of the names, all the three were honoured on November 9 at the Durbar Hall, Rashtrapati Bhavan.