Malyalam film 'Pulijanmam' bags best feature film award

New Delhi, Jun 10 (UNI) Malyalam film 'Pulijanmam' bagged the Best Feature Film Award whereas Bengali filmstar Soumitra Chatterjee was adjudged as the Best Actor and Tamil filmstar Priyamani as the Best Actress in the 54th National Film Award, 2006 , announced here today.

'Lage Raho Munnabhai' won the award for the Best Popular Film.

Madhur Bhandarakar got the top film honour as best director for his film 'Traffic Signal'.

The Indira Gandhi Award for the Best First Film of Director went jointly to Ekantham(Malyalam) and Kabul Express(Hindi) directed by Madhukaithapuram and Kabir Khan, respectively.

The Best Film Award in the non-feature film category was bagged by Bishar Blues by Amitabh Chakravarty.

Earlier, the three members of the jury for the 54th National Film Awards for Feature and Non-Feature films Buddhadeb Dasgupta, K Bikram Singh and Madhu Jain submitted their recommendations to Minister for Information and Broadcasting Priyaranjan Dasmunsi here this morning.

The awards for 2007 will be announced later as the whole process has been disturbed due to the long delay in the announcement of 2005 awards, which was done only last year.

The delay was caused by the court orders for stay obtained by a memebr of the jury who had challenged the criteria for inclusion of films for consideration of awards.

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