65th National Film Awardees threaten to boycott

The 65^th National Film Awards were announced recently and all the elated recipients were eagerly looking forward to being felicitated by the President Ram Nath Kovind. In fact, they even arrived in Delhi yesterday for the dress rehearsals. However, this year it seems like the dreams of all these awardees will not be fulfilled.

According to a report in Mumbai Mirror, the awardees are planning to revolt after they learned that only 11 awards will be presented  by President Kovind and rest will be given handed over by Smriti Irani (Union Information & Broadcasting Minister), Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore(Minister of State, Information & Broadcasting) and Narendra Kumar Sinha (Secretary, Information & Broadcasting). (Also read: Boney Kapoor & Daughters reach Delhi to accept Sridevi’s National Award)

The docket issued to the awardees state that Smriti Irani, Rajyavardhan Rathore, and Narendra Sinha will hand over the majority of the awards first and later when President Kovind will arrive at the ceremony he will be presenting the remaining 11 awards.

Awardees are not happy regarding these arrangements as they all feel that this is like differentiating the winners. The angry awardees met Smriti Irani to voice their grievances and threatened to boycott the awards if the issue is not resolved immediately.

Reportedly President Kovind owing to his packed schedule has allotted just one hour for the awards. This made the organizers of these awards invite other Ministers to distribute the awards.

“The last minute change in schedule was an insult which every winner unanimously opposed. Everyone’s upset and the mood is gloomy. The awardees told Smriti that the time allotted for speeches and photo-ops could be cut down so that all the winners could be felicitated by the President himself”a source close to the development was quoted saying in Mumbai Mirror.

The I&B Minister Smriti Irani has contacted the President’s office regarding the displeasure of the recipients and now it has to be seen if President Kovind will hand out all the awards or whether he will attend the awards just for an hour as decided previously.

This year, the National Awards will be honoring late Vinod Khanna and Sridevi posthumously with the Dadasaheb Phalke and Best Actress awards (for her performance in ‘Mom’) respectively.

For more updates stay tuned.

Pooja Sharma

Cinephile. Bibliophile. Pluviophile. Selenophile. Autophile. Aesthete. Blood group- Tea positive. Poetry lover. Sucker of rom-coms.

PS: Sharmaji ki Ladki sucks at writing bios.
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