SRK, Aamir battle out for National awards

Bollywood film-stars Shah Rukh Khan and Aamir Khan are pitted against each other in the best actor category for the National Film Awards for 2007.

Updated on: Sep 18, 2009, 21:05:11 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Bollywood film-stars Shah Rukh Khan and Aamir Khan are pitted against each other in the best actor category for the National Film Awards for 2007.

Shah Rukh Khan has been nominated for his role as Kabir Khan in Chak De India — the man who as coach turns a shattered women’s hockey team into world champions.

Aamir Khan will compete with his subtle performance in Taare Zameen Par, a movie depicting the unique problems of dyslexic children. Khan played a school teacher who helps a dyslexic child, played by Darsheel Safari, to overcome the difficulties posed by his disability. Safari has been nominated for best child actor.

I&B Minister Ambika Soni is likely to announce the awards next week.

President Pratibha Patil will give the awards in Delhi in October this year.

Neither of the Khans has ever won the national award for best actor.

Apart from best actor, Aamir Khan has also been nominated for another category, as producer. His film Taare Zameen Par has been nominated for best film by a jury headed by film-maker Sai Paranjpe.

Shah Rukh Khan is in the race for more feathers in his cap. His home production Om Shanti Om has been nominated under the category best feature film for wholesome entertainment.

Here the film finds a rival in Bollywood film Jab We Met, starring Shahid Kapoor and Kareena Kapoor.

There were over 100 feature films, Bollywood and regional, competing for the highest honours. The jury has short-listed about 30 movies under different categories.

The awards for films released in 2007 are being given this year because this annual feature was delayed by a year as those for 2005 had been challenged in court by documentary film-maker Anand Patwardhan.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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