Bagging the coveted National Film Award is one of the biggest honour for any recipient in the Indian cinema. However, during this 65th National Award, not everyone was in their best of spirits and was in a celebratory mood. The reason being, it was announced during the award rehearsals that President Ram Nath Kovind will only present 11 awards and the rest will be conferred by Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Minister Smriti Irani; Minister of State, I&B, Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore and I&B Secretary Narendra Kumar Sinha. This left the other honourable winners insulted, and therefore, more than 50 awardees decided to boycott the ceremony.

It drew immense flak, and according to an Indian Express report, around 69 awardees — including big names like Suresh, Nagraj Manjule, Sani Ghose Ray, Meghnath, Praveen Morchhade, S Solomon Raju, Parvathy Thiruvothu, Kaushik Ganguly, Juhi Bhatt, Justin Jose K, Suresh Eriyat and Deokar Amar — came together signed a letter. They addressed it to the Ministry and also marked to the President, saying, “It feels like a breach of trust when an institution/ceremony that abides by extreme protocol fails to inform us of such a vital aspect of the ceremony with prior notice. It seems unfortunate that 65 years of tradition are being overturned in a jiffy.”

Suresh and Nilima Eriyat, whose Tokri won the award for best animation short film, also skipped the ceremony. On speaking exclusively to LatestLY, Suresh Eriyat, said, "It was highly disappointing, our problem is not in receiving the award from Smriti Irani, but our problem is about the last moment change of plan. According to the official invitation letter that was sent to us, it was clearly mentioned that we would be getting the award from the President of India. Our point of contention is, there shouldn't be any discrimination because it is a uniform platform. We met Shekhar Kapur, the head of the jury for this year's film awards twice, and Smriti Irani as well, we were promised a revert, which didn't happen. We haven't rejected the award because it is a coveted one, but decided to stay away from the ceremony."

Here is a copy of the letter:

According to PTI reports, the President felicitated winners in prominent categories such as the Dadasaheb Phalke Award for Vinod Khanna, best actress for Sridevi, best playback singer male for KJ Yesudas, best actor for Sen and AR Rahman in two categories-- best music director and background score. In the history of National Film Awards, it was for the first time that the president attended the second half of the ceremony honouring only a few of the veteran artists and winners in major categories.

65-year-old tradition broken: 

It's a 65-year old traditional, where the President of India gives away the National Awards. According to the dejected winners, there was no proper intimation, and only in the 11th hour, they were informed that President would be staying at the ceremony for one hour. Das, who won the Best Feature Film award for her critically acclaimed Assamese film "Village Rockstars" said, "It is very sad and unfortunate as we were all expecting to get the award from the president," as told to PTI.

Devineni said although it is unfair but he was present at the ceremony as he did not want to disrespect the office of the president."It's very unfortunate and unfair. We are are very disappointed. Everyone wants to receive the award from the president. I am here because I don't want to disrespect the office of the president," he told PTI.

However, playback singer KJ Yesudas and director Jayaraj chose to attend the event, despite having signed the petition. The move of theirs has drawn criticism from certain sections of Malayalam film industry.

According to an Indian Express report, the vacant seats at the award function were filled with dummies. Some of the winners came in, but for half of those who didn’t, their nameplates were removed. To avoid further embarrassment, names of 30 winners those who were not present, were not announced.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on May 04, 2018 11:56 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).