Film awards: red tape, red faces

Trust red tape to ensure red faces. Two members of the National Film Awards jury had to walk out and a third—the chairman himself—...

Trust red tape to ensure red faces. Two members of the National Film Awards jury had to walk out and a third—the chairman himself—was in a fix over a glitch that the I&B Ministry blames on ‘‘clerical error’’ and lack of time.

All revolving around the declaration form that requires jurors to state they have no vested interest in the selection process and that none of the entrants is related to them. Even the category of ‘ex-spouse’’ is included in this list putting chairman of the jury film director Prakash Jha in a bit of a spot. His ex-spouse Deepti Naval is in Freaky Chakra, a film that has made it to the list of entries.

Film festival director Neelam Kapur called it a ‘‘clerical error which has been set right.’’

Story continues below this ad

But for jury members Raza Murad and Anjan Srivastava, there was little that could be done other than politely asking them to leave. Reason: they were told that their films had been included in the list.

Srivastava who had to reschedule his shootings for the jury assignment had to go back to Mumbai. ‘‘I found out that Rishte, where I have a two-bit role, is an entry this year,’’ said Srivastava blaming the directorate for not furnishing the list of film entries on time. Director Neelam Kapur, says of the 130-odd films chosen as official entries, the credits of Srivastava and Murad were missing.

As for Murad, he realized only on his arrival in Delhi that his Telugu film Indra had made it to the list. ‘‘The Government wastes money on inviting us over, care should have been taken before they did that,’’ Murad said.

While the jurors are expected to come clean, the Directorate of Film Festivals, the nodal agency behind the National Awards, is required to furnish the list of films that have to be judged by the jurors. Officials admit they could not do this as they had run out of time.