Most baffling award nominations/results?

Controversy has not been a new word surrounding the National Awards. New issues keep cropping up every other year which follows in a lot of bad blood. Here are the Top 5 National Award Controversies.

1. 2000

When Kirron Kher won the award in the Best Actress category for Bengali film 'Bariwali', it was alleged that her voice for the Bengali film was dubbed by a Bengali actress, Rita Koiral whereas the producer of the film Anupam Kher had filled the nomination form claiming that its Kirron's original voice.

Rita Koiral claimed that since she had dubbed for Kirron's character in the film, it made her an equal claimant to the award. However, Kirron refuted the charges claiming she spent hours for her dialogue delivery following which the award remained with Kirron herself.

2. 2001

This was a major controversy as it led to the resignation of certain jury members. The awards won by Raveena Tandon and Anil Kapoor, for 'Daman' and 'Pukar' respectively, did not go down with the jury members due to alleged discrepancies in the system.

Director Pradip Kishen, along with two other jury members quit the Feature Film Jury stating that a "cynical political cartel in the Jury bulldozed its way as it had pre-decided many of the awards".

Furthermore, Raveena's uncle Macmohan was also a part of the jury which only added fuel to fire.

3. 2003

Celebrated director Adoor Gopalakrishnan had expressed his dissatisfaction over Ajay Devgn being given the National Award for Best Actor as the jury comprised Prakash Jha. According to Gopalakrishnan, it was immoral and improper for Jha to head the jury as he was directing Devgn in his latest flick 'Gangaajal'.

4. 2005

When Saif Ali Khan was awarded the Best Actor, there were more who found this ridiculous than those who thought it was different and well-deserved.Most thought that the others nominated were much more deserving than Saif who put up an 'average performance'.

Rumour mills were abuzz with some going to the extent of stating that Mom Sharmila Tagore, who was the chairperson of the Censor Board of India influenced the National Films Awards jury to help her son bag the prestigious award.

5. 2006

One of the jury members of the 53rd National Film Awards for 2005, Sahyamli Banerjee Dev levelled allegations in a court petition that the awards were fixed. In her petition, she alleged that 'Black' did not qualify for the best film award and was an adaptation of the English feature film "The Miracle Worker" of 1962.

As a result, the awards were postponed by the Delhi High Court for quite a long time and were announced only in 2007 after a delay of two years