Vyjayanthimala was the head jury at the time when Raveena Tandon bagged the National Award for ‘Daman’.
It was in 2001 that Raveena Tandon won the National Award and was given the Best Actress honour for her role in ‘Daman’. While it has been decades since the incident, veteran actor and dancer Vyjayanthimala talked about the controversy surrounding Raveena Tandon‘s win as few eyebrows were raised that time. Some people even touted that she had won because her maternal uncle McMohan was a jury member.
For the unversed, McMohan is best known for playing the iconic role of Samba in ‘Sholay’.
Speaking to Times of India, Vyjayanthimala talked about how there was a lot of hullabaloo surrounding Raveena’s win, but mentioned how she had won because of the sensitive portrayal of a domestic abuse survivor and not due to her connections with the jury.
“I remember the incident vividly. There was a lot of heat and dust about Raveena winning the award. But isn’t that the norm? Each year someone or the other has an objection,” the actor mentioned, adding that for Raveena, it was not an easy task to pull off such a role in a gentle but intelligent manner.
At the time, ‘Daman’ director Kalpana Lajmi too had defended Raveena’s win, and compared it to Shabana Azmi’s performance in Lajmi’s film ‘Ek Pal’. Meanwhile, Anil Kapoor was honoured with the Best Actor National Award for his act in the Rajkumar Santoshi film ‘Pukar’, which also featured Madhuri Dixit and Namrata Shirodkar in pivotal roles.