Lack of consensus among jury members has resulted in three nominations for the prestigious Dada Saheb Phalke award this year even as the I&B Ministry is yet to get the go-ahead from the Bombay High Court to announce the National Film Awards.
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The shortlist for the Phalke honour includes veteran actors Suchitra Sen and Sulochana. There is no authorised confirmation of the third name though noted song writer and director Gulzar and Bengali actor Soumitra Chatterjee — on whom the BCC made a documentary titled Gaaj (tree) — were among those considered by the jury.
Jury chairman Mrinal Sen was reportedly indisposed and, therefore, couldn’t attend the meeting that finalised the nominees. But other members — including Yash Chopra, Adoor Gopalakrishnan and Nageshwar Rao — ran the names through him before sending the shortlist to the ministry.
Controversy has dogged the award this year, beginning with Sen taking exception to I&B Minister P.R. Dasmunshi mooting Suchitra Sen’s name without keeping the jury in the loop. As for Sulochana, her nomination has the backing of melody queen Lata Mangeshkar and NCP chief Sharad Pawar.
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Sources told the Hindustan Times that the lack of unanimity in the jury would give the minister the right to choose from among the three finalists. Suchitra is understood to have got one first preference vote while Sulochana and the undisclosed nominee got two each. The jury that met on August 29 gave differing second preference votes to the contenders.
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Sources told the Hindustan Times that the lack of unanimity in the jury would give the minister the right to choose from among the three finalists. Suchitra is understood to have got one first preference vote while Sulochana and the undisclosed nominee got two each. The jury that met on August 29 gave differing second preference votes to the contenders.
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One factor that could have gone against Suchitra Sen with the jury members was her reported unwillingness to come to Delhi to receive the award. But this does not eliminate her chances completely as, in the past, the government has presented the award to stars like Devika Rani at their home.
“Once the jury submits the panel of names, the government can ask the nominee whether he or she wants to accept the award. Only those who are ready to accept the award are considered by the government,” a senior official remarked. He said that the ministry had not formally contacted Suchitra so far.
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The winner is likely to be finalised by the end of next week. But the announcement of the National Film Awards may take longer as the matter is pending before the Bombay High Court, which has stayed the process on a petition by documentary film-maker Anand Patwardhan and two others.
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.
