Director Gunasekhar who directed the movie Rudrama devi has been expressing his displeasure for not getting Nandi awards for his movie. Earlier, he wrote an open letter questioning CM’s decision of not granting tax exemption to his film. After Nandi awards were announced, he questioned why Rudrama Devi movie, which speaks about women empowerment was not considered for any of the first, second and third best films. For this question Jeevitha in the capacity of Jury member responded.

She responded – “We received Baahubali as well as Rudramadevi movies for the awards in the same year and both the films belong to same genre. So in the process of accommodating films of all genres, we could not give many awards (Telugu360: It is actually wrong on part of Jeevitha to say Baahubali and Rudramadevi belong to same genre. Obviously she could not differentiate the genres of historic films against the genre of folklore – Rudramadevi belongs to first and Baahubali belongs to second genre respectively).” She also responded on Gunasekhar’s question on – “Why Allu Arjun was given best character award instead of best supporting actor award”. She told, the award that was announced to Allu Arjun is called “SV Ranga Rao best character award” and he should be proud to receive that award, at least that’s what we, the jury members, had believed.

Now Gunasekhar responded to Jeevitha’s statements. He told, immediately after announcing awards, she praised Chandra Babu Naidu and his ruling. When asked by journos if she would join TDP she replied,yes, if you want. So Jeevitha lost her credibility by supporting to one political party. It is wrong to accommodate such people (film people expecting political benefits) into the jury. He also said regarding Allu Arjun’s award, jury can not change the category themselves. They have to examine the deservingness of the candidate only for the category for which he was nominated.

It seems this Nandi awards debate is going to continue for few more days!!!