Naresh Mehta was a Hindi writer. There are over 50 published works in his name, ranging from poetry to plays. He received several literary awards, most notably the Sahitya Akademi Award in Hindi in 1988 for his poetry collection Aranya and the Jnanpith Award in 1992. He was born on February 15, 1922 in Shajapur, British India. Among the numerous schools of poetry which sprang up in the 1950s was Nakenwad, a school deriving its nomenclature from the first letters of the names of its three pioneers - Nalin Vilochan Sharma, Kesari Kumar, and Naresh Mehta.