President Ram Nath Kovind has conveyed his displeasure to the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) over the controversy regarding this year's National Film Awards.
The event, held in New Delhi last Thursday, witnessed an unprecedented boycott by as many as 55 awardees after it was known that the President would be giving away only 11 awards and would stay at the awards functions only for an hour.
And, in a break from tradition, the Information and Broadcasting Minister gave away rest of the awards.
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"The invitation said the awards will be given away by the President and we were all under that impression. Only on the day of the rehearsal, we learnt that the Honorable President would be there for an hour and select awards will be given. That's when people got angry," said an awardee who received his award from the Information and Broadcasting Minister Smriti Irani.
When the controversy had broken out on May 3, the President's secretary Ashok Malik had said that Rashtrapati Bhavan had conveyed to every ministry about the new protocol that President Kovind had set for all official functions.
“President attends all award functions and convocations for a maximum of one hour. This has been the protocol since he took office. It was conveyed to I&B Ministry several weeks ago and the Ministry knew this all along. Rashtrapati Bhavan is surprised by the 11th hour questions that have been raised,” Mr. Malik had said on Thursday in a statement.
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