Has BJP bought Suriya's silence with National award ? Controversy unboxed

 

Can an Actor’s Manager influence National jury to give an award to his client who is constantly expressing views that oppose Central Government policies?. YouTube film critic Blue Sattai Maran has tweeted that another YouTube channel Valai Pechu had raised this doubt before the award announcement that the manager in the jury would ensure awards for the film produced by his client or for the actor itself. As it has come true, Maran has asked for a reply. Meanwhile a Tamil film Thaen which was critically acclaimed was omitted out of the final shortlist and Valai Pechu Channel alleges that the director had got a call from DIFF asking his details etc but later dumped it. Reason being that Tamannah agreed to act in the film overlooking the advice of Thangadurai who is also her Manager. It is alleged that the Manager saw that Tamannaah did not do the film and hence he torpedoed the film’s chances at the award committee.

A FB post by senior journalist Meeran  says that  Anupama Subramanian of Deccan Chronicle who was in the panel  of National awards was instrumental in getting several awards for Tamil- Malayalam films. . Out of  ten  awards for Tamil films, five went to Suriya and his film Soorarai Pottru.

BJP Tamil Nadu should be in state of disbelief. Suriya after Kamal Hassan, is most vocal in opposing the policies of the Central Government. BJP Youth wing threatened the actor with legal action if he continued with his anti- NEET tirade. Even his film ` Jai Bhim’ was attacked by no less a leader than H Raja. The last outburst by  Suriya  was against the proposed changes to Cinematography Act. He termed it as a move to strangle the voice of expression. The New Education Policy bill too was opposed by Suriya. An interesting tweet by H Raja of BJP  who asked –  You opposed children studying three languages under NEP and you release Jai Bhim in five languages. Suriya just clicked the Like button. Some of the utterances by Jyotika about the Big Temple in Thanjavur did not go well with BJP.

Actor Karthi ( younger brother of Suriya) recently criticized the Environmental Impact Assessment Draft. BJP’s leaders from film industry like Gayathri Raghuram had slammed the actor brothers. Rajinikanth as usual in his diplomatic way lauded Suriya for making the Education policy a topic of discussion and in the same breath asked him to stick to films and not enter politics. Actor Shivakumar discourses on Hindu scriptures and promotion of Yoga is the only sound from that family  that is  music to BJP.

Thangadurai is synonymous with FilmFare in South.  Filmfare did not allot much space to South Indian films and close to the South awards, it did a token attendance by devoting a few pages to the winners. Later it started printing separate covers with regional actors for each South language and had it distributed in that region only .  Coming back  to Thangadurai, somewhere along the line, Mumbai girls landing up in Chennai were imported by him. Many actresses (remember Nagma- Kiran being one among them) who hit big time had Thanga as manager. He was the man with Midas touch.   Film Fare award shows in South became synonymous with Thangadurai.

Though, he was successful with heroines, in the hero category, it was not the same.  After almost two decades in the field, it was with Suriya that he got a STAR hero in his client list. Here again, it was Jyotika for whom he was the manager, that helped him.

On record, Thangadurai has a service record of being with Film Fare for more than two decades and is in every way qualified to be on the national award jury.  The moot question is – Can Thangadurai get 9 others in the jury to toes his line, if BJP does not approve it ? (means the I&B ministry ). So, BJP has bought the silence of Suriya ?. Counter argument could be that BJP does not interfere in such matters.

The Thaen film allegation is probably an outcome of it being shortlisted by the South panel and send to national jury and it being rejected. All those who asked that if Thangadurai can get Suriya the best actor award, then why did he not get his other client Tamannaah the best actress award ?. She  had only Telugu films releases  in 2021 . For your information, her manager for Telugu is not Thangadurai.