For a few years now, many fly-by-night award ceremonies have been operating under the name of Dadasaheb Phalke, which have got nothing to do with the main Dadasaheb Phalke award, the one that is presented by the government of India.
One such ceremony is called, Dadasaheb Phalke Academy Award (see what they did there?)
Now, in what seems like a desperate bid to hand out trophies, this award show, held annually, has instated a new category called, International Icon Award.
The category has been introduced so they can give the award to Priyanka Chopra, who's done one TV show (Quantico) and one film (Baywatch) in the West.
The committee's chairman, one Ganesh Jain, happily accepted the same.
"Priyanka's hard work has earned her a spot on an international platform. She's made Indians proud by representing the country on a global level. This compelled us to introduce this fresh category," he told Mumbai Mirror.
While a lot of these fringe award ceremonies have cropped up, the official (and the genuinely credible) award is called the Dadasaheb Phalke Award -- which is just a single award, for lifetime achievement.
Manoj Kumar was the recipient of the same in 2016. Gulzar, Shashi Kapoor, Pran are some of its other recipients.
In this article, we called out other ceremonies who've exploited Phalke's name to run their own show. Some of the dubious categories include, 'King of Bollywood' award.
At a time, when award ceremonies are narrowing the categories (MTV recently handed out the first gender-neutral Best Actor Award), it's quite amusing to see our award shows expanding the horizon in ways few can imagine.
For instance, the Oscars added a new category 16 years ago in 2001 -- when animation films peaked, taking a life of their own and became a genre that warranted its own category. Before that, the last changes made to the categories was in 1948 (Best Costume Design) and in 1947 (Best Foreign Film).
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