Why Ambika Soni did not announce Amitabh PAA

In an interesting turn of events, Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting 

Ambika Soni decided not to announce the 57th National Awards for films,

 though it is customary for the minister to do the honours, considering the 

prestige attached to the awards and the fact that it is the President of India 

who gives away the awards.Renu Mittal a senior journalist in her despatch

also concurred with this view she wrote much more details.

Instead, she directed the Director General of Films S M Khan to make 

the announcement, which he did.

Highly placed sources in the ministry disclosed that the reason was very

 simple. Since Amitabh Bachchan [ Images ] had been handpicked by the 

jury to receive the Best Actor Award for the popular Bollywood film Paa, 

and the announcement would have to be made by the minister, 

she is learnt to have opted out of the entire press conference to 

ensure that she did not get into any controversy or that she could 

not be blamed later for the awards.

Amitabh Bachchan has been persona non grata with 10 Janpath

 and Congress chief Sonia Gandhi 

 for some years now, 

and consequently the Congress party has also been wary of 

associating itself with the actor.

There have been controversies regarding Bachchan during the

 time when Priya Ranjan Das Munshi was the I&B minister. 

The actor had been invited to be the chief guest at the

 International Film Festival in Goa [ Images ], but after

sections of the Conngress created a ruckus, the

 invitation to Bachchan was withdrawn by the

 ministry, leaving a lot of red faces in its wake.

Amitabh and his wife Jaya Bachchan's association with Amar Singh 

 and the Samajwadi Party had only added fuel to the fire, with Amar 

Singh not missing a chance to keep prompting the Bachchans 

against Sonia Gandhi.

But of late there has been a falling out between the Bachchans 

and Amar Singh with the latter having been thrown out of the 

Samajwadi Party, but the Congress unwilling to find a safe 

refuge in the party for him.

But that has so far not impacted the relations between the 

first family of Bollywood and the first family of politics.

A ministry sources said that with the jury functioning independently 

and taking its own decisions on who should be awarded and for 

which film, neither the minister nor the ministry comes into the picture.

But the ever cautious Ambika Soni, who has had her fingers burnt a 

few times in the past, probably decided to err on the side of caution 

and decided to keep far away from the announcement, honouring 

Bachchan for the third time with the best actor award.

Not a mean feat by any standards!