National film awards presented

The Indian film industry witnessed significant growth in annual turnover in 2015, President Pranab Mukherjee said here on Tuesday.

In 2015, the turnover of the Indian film industry was Rs 13800 crore against Rs 12600 crore just a year before. Not only the domestic revenue earning but external revenue earning also increased by one billion, from Rs 860 crore in 2014 to Rs 960 crore billion in 2015, he said.

“Surely, my good friend Arun Jaitley in his other hat would be quite happy because the industry is making contribution to the exchequer and solving little bit his monumental problems as finance ministry of this country,” the President said in a lighter vein.

Mukherjee was addressing a function organised by the Information and Broadcasting Ministry to give away the 63rd National Film Awards and the prestigious Dada Saheb Phalke Award. Bollywood mega star Amitabh Bachchan received the National Film Award for Best Actor from the President. This is the fourth National Film



Award he received for best acting.

Mukherjee conferred Dada Saheb Phalke Award on veteran actor and director Manoj Kumar. After receiving the award from Mukherjee, Kumar who was on a wheelchair took out a memento from his pocket and gifted it to the President.

Kangana Ranaut, who turned up to the event with her father, received her third National Film Award for Best Actress. Addressing the function, Jaitley congratulated all the winners and said the awards was “truly national” for the reason that “most distinguished jury objectively dispassionately selects the very best” from hundreds of films in various categories produced in different languages every year. He also congratulated Kumar for Dada Saheb Phalke Award, saying it was an “extremely well-deserved honour” conferred on the veteran actor because he “branded” the idea of patriotism blending his talent with music, scripts in his films making the audience remember the contemporary history of the country.