186 prominent film personalities send petition to President

PUNE: Actor Vidya Balan, a nominee in the current Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) Society, is one of the 186 National Award-winning film personalities who have signed the letter sent to President Pranab Mukherjee on Thursday seeking his "direct intervention" to resolve the ongoing FTII crisis.
The film personalities want the President to facilitate a resolution to end the deadlock between the students and the ministry of information and broadcasting (I&B).The signatories, which include 112 FTII alumni and 74 other members of the film fraternity, have urged Mukherjee to assume charge as the chancellor of FTII and declare FTII a Centre of Excellence and an autonomous institution.
Copies of the memorandum will also be given to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the I&B ministry.
The letter has been signed by Mani Ratnam, Revathi, Jahnu Barua, Adoor Gopalakrishan, Anand Patwardhan, Girish Kasaravalli, Resul Pookutty, Aparna Sen, Buddhadeb Dasgupta, Umesh Kulkarni, Santosh Sivan, Saeed Akhtar Mirza, Kundan Shah, Shaji N Karun, Dibakar Banerjee, Rajkummar Rao, Sriram Raghavan and Arun Khopkar among others.
The letter states that the film fraternity is "dismayed" by the manner in which the ministry has "arbitrarily and hastily" made political appointments. It also says that the "victimization of students is exaggerated and uncalled for". The letter states that the Indian film industry is "anguished" with the way "the ministry has mishandled the complex set of issues brought up by the students, the alumni, the film-making community and the wider civil society".
Filmmaker and former FTII chairperson Adoor Gopalakrishnan on Thursday criticized the government for "vilification of students and treating FTII students as criminals".
"The problem would not have arisen if there were due consultations before making such appointments," he said in a press conference in Mumbai.
Others present at the press conference included filmmakers Anand Patwardhan, Dibakar Bannerjee, Hansal Mehta, Kundan Shah, Gurvinder Singh among others.
Banerjee and Mehta said this was the right time for the government to talk to students and be an "inclusive government".