Tags:
Journalism of Courage
MUMBAI, September 29: Shakti Samanta was elected president while his group won the polls at the well attended 59th annual general body meeting of Indian Motion Picture Producers’ Association on Monday.
Sawan Kumar Tak, Shushma Shiromani and Vinay Kumar Sinha were elected senior vice-president, vice-president and treasurer respectively.
The polls were held amid much slogan-shouting and protests. Rajiv Suri, Rajeev Kumar, Vinod Chabria and N N Sippy accused the outgoing president of mismanaging the IMPPA affairs, autocratic behaviour and complete disregard of producers’ interests. Ahmed and his group members were shouted down by 200-odd members when they tried to pacify the angry members.
Only two of Ahmed’s group members out of 16 who were in the fray got elected. Sandeep Sethi and Preeti Sapru, in ordianary class and one Anand Giridhar from Associate-1 class could get elected (?).
The Samanta group won hands down with K D Shorey, Pranlal Mehta, Rajeev Kumar, Sawan Kumar Tak, Satish Khanna, N RPachisia, Pawan Kumar, Mukesh Bhatt and Madan Mohla getting elected from ordinary class and Darshan Saberwal, Dimpy Ramdayal, S K Kapur and Surjit Aujla winning from associate class with a comfortable majority along with the office bearers.
For the first time in the recent years the IMPPA annual body witnessed a big turn out of nearly 500 members at the ISCKON auditorium. As many as 42 members were in the election fray but only 222 voted in ordinary class and 56 in associated class. Pappu Varma and Suresh Malhotra conducted the election.
The surprise of the day was the election of Dara Singh as an independent candidate since his name was listed in both the groups (?).
Earlier, veteran producer B R Chopra gave away the annual IMPPA awards for this year to well-known singer Suraiya, lyricist Anand Bakshi, veteran producers Gulshan Rai and Gulshan Behl and posthumously to Aspi Irani for their oustanding contribution to the Indian cinema. Excerpts from their films were also shown.
