Members, students protest against appointment of new FTII chief Gajendra Chauhan

New Delhi: With government appointing actor Gajendra Chauhan as chief of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) council, one of its members Jahnu Barua on Friday expressed reservations saying the prestigious institute should be headed by a stalwart. “People feel that generally things are not going right. Obviously my reservation is that I want that the government should look seriously into it,” the National Award-winning filmmaker from Assam told PTI. [caption id=“attachment_2293772” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] National Award winning director Jahnu Barua expressed reservations over the govt appointing Gajendra Chauhan as FTII chief. PIB image[/caption] Asked if his reservations were related to the appointment of Chauhan as the chairman of FTII governing council, Barua said, “One of the factors is that… obviously that is what the protest has been going on.” Students of FTII on Friday boycotted classes in protest against the appointment of Chauhan. “Our point is that we want obviously the institute to be headed by a stalwart from this field. Somewhere we feel in a way that something is going wrong in that kind of a decision,” he added. Asked if he thought that Chauhan was not that kind of stalwart, Barua said, that this is what “everyone feels”. He added that as alumni, they were very emotionally involved with the institute and there was a feeling of “unpleasantness” among many “well wishers of the institute”. When contacted, Chauhan said that he only wanted to convey to students of FTII that at least they should get to know his efficiency and how he could serve the institute. The actor, who is remembered for his role as ‘Yudhisthira’ in teleserial ‘Mahabharat’, said he would meet students and speak to them and would always be pro-student. Asked specifically about Barua’s comments, Chauhan said that he had no information regarding them. The I&B ministry had recently reconstituted the FTII Society nominating as the President of the FTII Society and also Chairman of its Governing Council. Apart from Barua, other members of the council include actress Vidya Balan,  cinematographer Santosh Sivan and filmmaker Raju Hirani. Meanwhile, I&B ministry officials said that it committed to establish FTII as a world class institution and outline a roadmap that would bring the best out of the students in terms of skills, capacity building creativity and their role in establishing India as a soft power. They added that with this vision in mind, the institutional framework of FTII would take the process forward. PTI