On Wednesday, Chaitanya Tamhane’s Court was declared as India’s official entry for the Academy Awards. Just when we thought the verdict would be a non-controversial one, came jury member Rahul Rawail’s resignation from the panel which chose the film as India’s entry to the Oscars.
In an exclusive interview to The Times of India, Rawail claims he had differences with the chairperson of the selection jury, Amol Palekar. When asked what went wrong, filmmaker Rahul Rawail said,
There’s a lot of manipulation that happened inside that room. Turning votes, incorrect counting of votes, declaring false number of votes are few of them. I demanded for a re-poll. I asked Amol to show me the votes, let me see them but he refused. I clearly told him that I don’t trust him at all. I pushed and pushed for re-counting and what shocked me was that the voting count of three films were wrong.
The filmmaker goes on to say that, Amol Palekar despised Court and hated the film.
Rawail had earlier tweeted that he had resigned from the jury because of Palekar’s obnoxious behaviour.
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