The real story behind why Charan Singh Sapra's Rajiv Gandhi Awards were discontinued!

SAUMIT SINGH

The annual Rajiv Gandhi Awards, one of the most high profile award shows on Mumbai’s cultural calendar which saw everyone from Mukesh Ambani, Sachin tendulkar, Anna Hazare and Sunita Williams in attendance over the years, has been discontinued forever. The show was allegedly given a quiet burial by the Congress High Command. Though Charan Singh Sapra, the brain behind it, denied an intervention by Delhi, he admitted that there’s no possibility of reviving the awards.

“The Rajiv Gandhi Awards have been officially discontinued by me because my political opponents within the party had suggested that I should downscale the function. After the peak it achieved, I felt that it was better to stop it altogether rather than reduce its significance. But contrary to what some people are saying, this was not stopped on the orders of the Congress High Command. It was ultimately my decision. I conceived this award when I was a Youth Congress leader to highlight the ideals of Rajiv Gandhi. But I cannot fight all the big political leaders within the party who are opposed to it," Sapra said.

Though he did not name anyone, Sapra, who is the vice president of the Mumbai Pradesh Congress Committee and also an MLC, hinted at a systematic vilification campaign. “Today I have begun to feel that I would have gone further in my political career if I had not built up the Rajiv Gandhi Awards into what it became. I have just ended up earning detractors, though my intention was just to educate the youth about the ideals of my favourite leader. Even my intention to get a satellite channel to broadcast the award show was to increase viewership and spread the message of Rajiv Gandhi in 30 countries. If people do not like that fact, what can I say? There was no personal gain involved in it,” he said.

However, Sapra chose not to comment about the money earned through selling the satellite rights of the function to a channel. Sources within the Congress said that with several allegations cropping up about the choice of awardees and the commercialisation of the award, the party was unwilling to have the name of Rajiv Gandhi associated with it. But Sapra sees it as a conspiracy by his political opponents within the party.

“It saddens me to hear that my motives are being questioned. I nurtured the awards for 12 years. But many leaders cannot accept that. ‘Sapra bada ho raha hai, uske pair kaatne chahiye’ – that’s their thinking. No problem. I have moved on. Now that I have started the Mulund festival, they have a problem with even that,” he said.

SOBER START

The phenomenal growth and radical change in the scope and nature of the Rajiv Gandhi Awards over the years tells a story in itself. The first Rajiv Gandhi Awards, held in 1996, had just three categories – renowned poet (Kavi Pradip), Gandhian and freedom fighter (Bhanushankar Yagnik) and Martyr (Captain Vinayak Gore). But the very next year, in 1997, all three categories were dropped and the first tentative steps towards a more Bollywood type awards show were taken – Mahendra Kapoor was honoured as Outstanding Playback Singer and Naushad Ali was given the award for Noted Lyricist. Those were the only two awards conferred that year.

By 2000, the awards were ready to introduce the first element of glamour which was to later become its USP. Yukta Mookhey took home an award for winning Miss World. The next year, in 2001, a best Actor Award was introduced which was picked up by Govinda.

Within two years, the Rajiv Gandhi Awards had undergone a complete metamorphosis. In 2002, the awards for Best Actor (given to Shah Rukh Khan) and Best Actress (won by Kajol) were institutionalized. In his acceptance speech Shah Rukh wasn’t shy in giving the credit to Sapra. “I would like to thank the jury and Mr Sapra for honoring me with this award which is named after a great visionary leader,” Shah Rukh said in his acceptance speech.

Kajol, who won best actress the same year, echoed the sentiment and her understanding of the pecking order: “I thank Mr Sapra, Mr Vilasrao Deshmukh, the jury and the committee members for honoring me this award.”

FLEXIBLE FORMAT

New categories of awards were regularly introduced: fashion designer, journalism, ad man, Marathi actor, sports person, woman achiever – Ekta Kapoor was the first to win it. Saif Ali Khan, who won best actor award in 2008, was frank enough to point out that “this is the first (best actor) award that I have got that is not from a purely film function award.”

The format of Rajiv Gandhi Awards was kept so malleable that special categories could be introduced almost every year and then, just as suddenly, be dropped forever.

The award for Gandhian and Freedom fighter was never featured again after its debut in 1996. The Martyr award made a comeback only once – in 2000 – when four Kargil martyrs were honoured posthumously. In 2007, Dr Naveenchandra Ramgoolam, the Prime Minister of Mauritius was honoured with an award in a rather customized category – International Cultural Exchange.

But this flexibility was over extended in 2008, when the owner of a major jewellery company was conferred a Rajiv Gandhi Award – for Innovative Marketing. The problem was that the company was a major sponsor of the 2008 show. When tongues started wagging, the company was immediately dropped from the list of sponsors.

FILMY FUNCTION

The controversy seemed to have been more or less forgotten by 2009, when the 12th edition of the awards exploded in full and unabashed Bollywood glory. From Shahid Kapoor and Katrina Kaif to Hrithik Roshan and Priyanka Chopra, the function was packed with televised filmy dances of top stars, stand up comic acts, item numbers by Rakhi Sawant, and attended by the who’s who of Mumbai.

Vilasrao Deshmukh was among those who gave away awards. Deshmukh, who also features on the website of the award show, did not hold back his praise for Sapra. “Charan Singh Sapra has been doing a fantastic job” he is reported to have said, and went on to remind everyone that he’s backed the event right from inception. “I have personally been at the last 11 ceremonies,” he’s been quoted as saying on the website.

Television rights had been awarded, over a dozen major sponsors were associated with the show and people weren’t shy of using influence to get themselves invited to NCPA to witness the razzmatazz. “From an awards show it had become film function, the sort which are handled by regular event management companies. It was too blatantly a commercial circus to be acceptable,” said a Congress MLA who did not wish to be named.

That’s when the Congress High Command decided that enough was enough and emphatically told the organizers of the Rajiv Gandhi Awards to pack up.

“In a way there's an uncanny similarity with what happened to Lalit Modi and his baby, IPL. Modi nurtured it into a money spinner only to have it taken away from him. But unlike Modi, Sapra didn’t waste any time in moving on. He recently organized the Mulund Festival – he lives in Mulund – and it was attended by some celebrities. But the A-listers seemed to be missing,” said a source.