When literary and media critic Sudhish Pachauri ended his remarks about the National Film Awards 2008 with an understated advisory asking participants not to make calls to jury members, he left many red faces in the room.
Attempts to influence members of the jury, cloistered in an undisclosed location most of the time as they view the shortlisted works, have for long been known to be part of the game, but it was left to Pachauri—jury member for adjudging best writing in cinema—to say it in public for the first time.
Talking about the entries for the 56th National Film Awards, Sudhish Pachauri digressed, saying: “Participants should refrain from calling jury members.’’ When asked to specify if he or his colleagues had been contacted in a bid to influence their decision, Pachauri said: “I am saying this because we have been contacted. However, the jury members remained independent in their views and chose the winners objectively.’’ He added that participants whose names were shortlisted had attempted to get in touch with the jury and not any member of the I&B ministry.
Reacting to the statement, I&B minister Ambika Soni said: “I have already asked him to clarify that no person from my ministry contacted the jury. For the participants, I think the statement by Pachauriji is embarrassment enough.’’
The National Film Awards itself is no stranger to controversy. For NFA 2007, the names were leaked by a jury member a week before the actual announcement was scheduled to take place. The jury member broke protocol and put up the names on his website, setting off a furore among officials of the Directorate of Film Festivals and the I&B ministry. The awards for the previous years have been delayed after the I&B ministry introduced a new clause mandating that a censor certificate was required for the films participating in the non-feature film category.
After reading this article, we came up with our own list of prizewinning suspects for attempting to bribe for top honours in acting!
You know from the get go if Arjun Rampal is starting to win awards at a national level, there is something seriously fishy going on. And that too, for a performance like Rock On! We’d grant you the occasional Filmfare Special Mention, but by no means did Rampal’s drunken rock star act deserve national recommendation.
The same goes for Madhur Bhandarkar’s mega-exaggerated hyper-real modelling world confessional Fashion. Madhur’s definitely been putting in calls to the Directorate of Film Festivals about his flick because he’s not only scored for one for character-that-gives-drug-users-a-bad-name Kangana but also …
… Priyanka as well, the hapless innocent victim of circumstance. And that’s not just any award, but Best Actress itself. We’re surprised the DFF didn’t just award her for her 12 characters in What’s Your Rashee, given that realism in your role is clearly not a factor. 
Which brings us to Jugal Hansraj’s directorial debut Roadside Romeo that won for Best Animation Film. A serious question we would like to raise here is, what was it competing against? There was that other movie about the ants and the ones with mythological figures like Ganesh and Hanuman but of course, there was no real star cast and no big banner backing them. Well-played, Yash Raj Films!