The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : High Court refuses to stay film awards list

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Aug 30, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

High Court refuses to stay film awards list

Staff Reporter

Baragur had questioned the nomination of certain films for
the awards

BANGALORE: The Karnataka High Court on Wednesday refused to stay the list of films nominated for the State Film Awards for 2006-07 and the holding of the awards function on Thursday.

Justice Ajit Gunjal passed the interim order on a petition by Baragur Ramachandrappa, writer, who questioned the nomination of certain films for the awards and sought a direction from the court to stay the nomination list.

In his petition, Mr. Ramachandrappa said the State Government in 1984 issued an order on giving away awards to films under different categories. He said the selection committee had recommended some films and persons for awards in gross violation of the Government order of 1984.

Mr. Ramachandrappa claimed that his film, Janapada, was not selected for the award.

He said the entire proceedings of the committee had been vitiated by the participation of K.C.N. Kumar, as he (Mr. Kumar) is a distributor for north Karnataka for the film Mungaru Male, which has been selected for an award.

Besides, Shivarudraiah, another member of the committee was an employee of the Department of Information and Publicity. Mr. Shivarudraiah, he said, had directed the film Datu, which had been given a jury award. The committee, he sai d, had recommended this award without obtaining the Government’s approval.

Mr. Ramachandrappa claimed that his film was “head and shoulders” above other films selected for the awards. He said actor Tara had been nominated for the best actor award for her role in Cyanide, while she had played th e role of a supporting actor.

He said the committee had also erred in recommending the selection of best films. This bias showed when it recommended Duniya, which preached violence and bloodbath and Cynaide which glorified a terrorist outfit l ike the LTTE.

He alleged that the committee had not gone by any regulations while selecting films and urged the court to stay the list. He also challenged the nomination of Nitu as best actor in a regional film (Tulu).

Additional Government Advocate, Veerappa, labelled Mr. Ramachandrappa as a “fence sitter” and said he had approached the court when the awards function was only a day away.

He submitted that the awards had been announced long ago, but Mr. Ramachandrappa had moved the court at the last minute.

He defended the selection of films and saying they had been chosen by a committee. He further said that all arrangements had been made for organising the function and urged the court to dismiss the petition.

Justice Ajit Gunjal, in his interim order, refused to stay the awards list. He, however, orally remarked that the Government appeared to have blundered and said the State should have selected the awards as was being done by organisers of Oscar awards and Filmfare awards.

The public were invited to participate in the nomination of awards by these two organisations and the State too should follow a similar procedure as it would be more transparent, he remarked.

He said while the State rules on awards were made in 1984, the Centre had come up with a new set of rules in 2004.

He suggested that the State could follow the example of the Centre.

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