Many have criticised that Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar and Malayalam actor Mohanlal received the Best Actor and Special Jury Mention, respectively, at the 64th National Film Awards since they are very close to jury chairman and director Priyadarshan. But Priyadarshan has said that those who criticise must first understand the structure and working of the jury.
Excluding the chairman, the jury consists of 10 members from regional juries and the chairman gets to vote only if there is a tie. The jury members are experts in the field of art, literature etc., and are not servile to obey whatever the chairman asks them to do.
Both Akshay and Mohanlal received equal number of votes and Akshay was chosen for the Best Actor award since Mohanlal has already received it in the past, Priyadarshan said. He added that most of the jury members were seeing Mohanlal’s performance for the first time and had no previous knowledge of his acting talents.
