Why national integration award for The Kashmir Files, asks RJD MP

With The Kashmir Files bagging the Nargis Dutt Award for the Best Feature Film on National Integration at the 69th National Film Awards, RJD MP Manoj Kumar Jha on Friday asked if "the definition of national integration has changed".

"Record my objections as well... Has the definition of 'national integration' been altered? Why has The Kashmir Files bagged the Nargis Dutt Award for the Best Feature Film on National Integration at the 69th National Film Awards? This award could have been given to Jai Bhim," Jha said in a video statement.

"If the award was given in the context of the definition of national integration, the selection committee did not have a better option than Jai Bhim," Jha posted on X, formerly Twitter.

In his video message, he added that the dignity of the national awards should not be compromised.

"It is shocking that a film like Jai Bhim was ignored and a controversial film has been awarded the National Integrity Nargis Dutt Award," Jha added in his video message.

Director Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri's The Kashmir Files was awarded the Nargis Dutt Award for the Best Feature Film on National Integration at the 69th National Film Awards on Thursday.

The event was held at the National Media Centre and hosted by the jury. It had 280 films across 28 languages in competition for various awards.

The Kashmir Files presents a storyline centred around the 1990 exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from Kashmir. It stars Mithun Chakraborty, Anupam Kher, Darshan Kumar and Pallavi Joshi.

The plot follows a Kashmiri Hindu college student, raised by his exiled grandfather and shielded from the knowledge of the circumstances of the death of his parents. After his grandfather's death, the student, who had come to believe in college that the exodus was benign, becomes driven to uncover the facts of his parents' deaths.

The plot alternates between the student's quest in the present time and his family's travails of 30 years ago.