Following furore over the recently announced Nandi awards, Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu reacted bitterly to the criticism over selection of the awardees. The awards were announced based on recommendations of the jury. The government would have conducted an IVRS survey to elicit public opinion if there was any clue that the selection would snowball into controversy. The government would have announced awards based on the survey results. “It is unfortunate a caste tinge is given to the awards too,” he said.
The issue came up for discussion at a strategy meeting held at Secretariat. Mr. Naidu said that he never expected that the awards would trigger so much controversy. Also, the government should not have announced the awards for three years at one go, he felt.
TDP national general secretary and IT Minister Nara Lokesh said that the NRAs, who neither have aadhaar cards nor voter cards in Andhra Pradesh, were talking about Nandi awards and special status to Andhra Pradesh.
The NRAs sitting in Hyderabad were making baseless allegations against the government. It was unfortunate that some of the jury members were also criticising the selection. Barring two or three persons none was commenting on the awards, he said.
Critics alleged that the ruling party influenced the jury members and gave away Nandi awards to a few undeserving actors and movies for the year 2014. The trouble broke out with cine director Gunasekhar taking to social media path to express his displeasure.
Poster to CM
“Is it wrong to question?” was a straight poser to the Chief Minister. Mr. Gunasekhar through twitter asked if it was wrong to question why entertainment tax exemption was not given to Rudrama Devi, a historical film, directed by him. Another history based film (Balakrishna starrer) Gautamiputra Satakarni was given tax exemption. It was still not known why Rudrama Devi was not considered for the exemption, he asked. Since then, the Nandi awards issue has been hitting the headlines.
