More Attended Than Boycotted The National Awards, But Parvathy TK Refused To Attend

Finally Pankaj Tripathy, Amit Masurkar  and  many other  recipients  of  the National film awards 2018 who had earlier decided to boycott the awards function  on  Thursday evening  after the President’s declaration of  severely limited attendance, finally did attend  the function.

Says one of  the winners, “Finally more  awardees  attended than  boycotted the ceremonies.  Pankaj Tripathiji and the Newton director Amit Masurkar  attended and  happily took their  award  from  Ms Smriti Irani. But about 65 winners stayed away. Kaushik Ganguly whose Bengali film Nagarkirtan  won the Special Jury award decided  to stay away. But he ‘allowed’ his film’s leading man  Riddhi Sen to  attend and collect  his award. How generous  of him.”

The  most glaring absence  was Parvathy TK who won a special jury award  for the Malayalam film Take Off. Taking the  film’s title too seriously she chose to  leave  rather than  receive her award for Smriti Irani.

A  source from the  National awards committee says, “It was very unfair churlish and childish of those who boycotted the  function.Smriti Irani personally pleaded  with the President  to  spare more  time  for the National awards function. But he  wouldn’t  budge.”