‘Lagey Raho Munnabhai’ wins national award

New Delhi, June 10: Sanjay Dutt-starrer ‘Lagey Raho Munnabhai’, which brought to fore ‘Gandhigiri’ by invoking the values of Mahatma Gandhi, swept the 54th National Film Awards for 2006, by winning four honours, including for best popular film.It thus became the first Hindi film sequel to repeat the feat of winning the award as ‘Munnabhai MBBS’ had bagged a similar honour in 2003.Veteran Bengali film actor Soumitra Chatterjee won the best actor award for the Bengali film ‘Podokkhep’, while Tamil actress Priyamani won the best actress award for the film ‘Paruthi Veeran’.Madhur Bhandarkar won the best director award for his film ‘Traffic Signal’, while ‘Khosla Ka Ghosla’ won the award for best Hindi film.Malayalam film ‘Pulijanmam’, directed by Priyanandanan, won the honours for the best feature film. ‘Kabul Express’, directed by Kabir Khan, shared the honours with Madhu Kaithapuram’s Malayalam film ‘Ekantham’, for the Indira Gandhi award for the best first film of a director.There has been no announcement on the Dadasaheb Phalke Award for outstanding contribution to Indian cinema.Announcing the winners of the 54th National Film Awards 2006, chairman of the jury for feature films, Budhhadeb Dasgupta, told reporters here that ‘Lagey Raho Munnabhai’ won awards for other categories like best lyrics (Swanand Kirkire), best screenplay (Rajkumar Hirani, Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Abhijat Joshi), and best supporting actor (Dilip Prabhavalkar, who portrayed Mahatma Gandhi in the film).Incidentally, it was a double bonanza for Prabhavalkar, who also won the award for best supporting actor award for Marathi film ‘Shevri’. He had played a benign middle-class clerk in Shevri and the award was given to him for portraying two diverse and equally challenging characters.

(PTI)