1. National Film Awards Ceremony: Prez Office ‘Surprised’ by Row
A day after recipients of the National Film Awards were informed that President Ram Nath Kovind would be presenting only 11 awards, more than 60 of them have conveyed their intention to not attend the ceremony scheduled for Thursday, 3 May.
In a letter written to Chaitanya Prasad, Additional Director General, Directorate of Film Festival, along with the President’s office and the Information & Broadcasting Ministry, the recipients said they were “disheartened” and “disappointed” with the development.
Read the full story here.
2. Why You Must Oppose the Government’s Plan to Control Online News
At a time when a section of the mainstream media is happy to conform to the official narrative, contort the truth or simply look away, it is the online news space that’s filling the void – emerging time and again as the voice of reason and fact.
It is the online media that helps separate the truth from lies, the truth from white lies and the truth from malicious, manufactured and biased propaganda that masquerades as news.
Watch the full story here.
3. Exclusive | Political Funding Opaque, Govt’s Silence Worrying: EC
A year has passed but the Narendra Modi government continues to turn a deaf ear to strong objections raised by the Election Commission (EC) over their failure to make political funding transparent.
The EC recommended that Section 29 C of the Representation of the People Act be amended to cap the limit of anonymous donations to Rs 2,000 from Rs 20,000. But the government has not made the amendments so far. The government had earlier made amendments in Section 13 A of the Income-Tax (IT) Act to cap cash donations to Rs 2,000.
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4. ‘Five-Rupees Doctor’ Enters Poll Battle in Karnataka’s Mandya
We’d lost our way near Mandya’s main bus stand looking for Shankare Gowda, an independent candidate who will be contesting the Karnataka Assembly elections later this month. We’d been asking for Gowda’s residence, but nobody seemed to know who he was.
However, the minute we changed tact and told people we were looking for the ‘five-rupees doctor’, everyone along the route was happy to guide us. ‘Five-rupees doctor’, that is the name the man has earned in the last 35 years.
Gowda is known far and wide for treating patients for a nominal fee of Rs 5. Now the doctor has decided to make a career in politics.
Watch the video here.
5. ‘102 Not Out’: Amitabh- Rishi’s Amazing Partnership Continues
Amitabh Bachchan and Rishi Kapoor have hit it out of the park with 102 Not Out. Bachchan as the lively 102-year-old Dattatraya Vakharia and Kapoor as the 75-year-old grumpy Babulal Vakharia put up an engaging father and son act, keeping the audience in splits and tears for over 1 hour 40 minutes.
No doubt, the two veteran actors have great material to work on. Story, screenplay and dialogue writer Saumya Joshi, who is also the playwright of the original Gujarati play by the same name, gives both Bachchan and Kapoor ample scope to display their histrionics.
Big B and Chintu charm the audience with their roles – Bachchan, who wants to break the record of the oldest living man in China pits his eccentricities against Kapoor, who just exists and has stopped actually “living” his life.
Read the full story here.
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