Govt urged to hand over film awards business to independent body

New Delhi, Sep 3 (UNI) The Government has been advised to opt out of the business of giving away National Film Awards and set up an independent body like the Sahitya Akademy, Sangeet Natak Akademy or the Lalit Kala Akademy to do the job.

The suggestion came from Chairman of the Jury for non-feature films K Bikram Singh at the 54th National Film Awards function at which President Pratibha Patil conferred the honours on the winners last night.

Mr Singh urged the President to see that a national film academy was set up to select the films for the awards.

''It was high time that the Government stepped out of business to make place for such a body,'' he said.

Mr Singh said the idea of the Awards being handled by an academy was not new, as it had been supported by eminent film personalities like Mrinal Sen, Shyam Benegal and Adoor Gopalakrishnan earlier too.

He also said that public broadcaster Doordarshan should patronise National Awards winning films by telecasting them within a reasonable period of time so that these films reached the masses.

The jury chairman expressed disappointment that the quality of entries of the films entered in the non-feature film section was not very good.

''However, we selected the most outstanding films,'' he said.

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