FTII row: Centre yet to act on Khan panel report

An assessment of views of students reveals distrust towards Gajendra Chauhan.

Exactly a month ago, the Director-General of the Registrar of Newspapers for India, S.M. Khan, who had earlier served as Director-General of the Directorate of Film Festivals (DFF), submitted his report to the Information and Broadcasting Ministry on the crisis that had gripped the premier Film and Television Institute of India as it notched up 70 days of protest. The Ministry is yet to speak out on the report, let alone work on it, as the strike by the students enters the 111th day and senior officials of the Ministry try and thrash out a solution in Mumbai.

The report could provide pointers on tackling the agitation of the students. The man sent to douse the fires was the proverbial outsider and not a ministry man. Also, perhaps what weighed in his favour were the contacts he had made with the film industry during his stint as the head of DFF. With the film fraternity expressing solidarity with the students, Mr. Khan’s contacts were sure to come in handy.

The Hindu spoke to sources in the Ministry to get a sense of the report.

The 17-odd pages which were submitted after the committee headed by Mr. Khan spent a night and day at the institute was a stocktaking report written after collecting the views of all the stakeholders involved — the agitating students, the academic faculty, alumni and the administrative staff.

In the report, one section was committed to collecting views of stakeholders; the second, was an assessment of the situation following the gherao of director Prashant Pathrabe by students and lastly, was the look at the 2008 batch of students who had not completed their diploma. The batch was casting its shadow on future batches of students studying at the FTII. Mr. Khan was sent by the Ministry following the gherao of Mr. Pathrabe by the students on the night of August 17. According to a highly placed source in the Ministry, the behaviour of the students was not “decent” and the Registrar had no option but to call the police to let the director walk free.

A large chunk of the report is a collation of the views of the students which reveals the distrust the Ministry-appointed chairperson Gajendra Chauhan had generated. According to sources in the Ministry, as long as Mr. Chauhan is at the helm, no solution to the strike is possible. Also, the appointment of four persons under the Persons of Eminence Category, who have proximity to the RSS, had raised the anger of the students. This finds a mention in the report.