National Film Awards Leave Delhi for Gujarat’s Giant Statue

President Droupadi Murmu will present the 72nd National Film Awards on 22 September at Ekta Nagar in Gujarat. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has framed the move as a plan to take the honours beyond Delhi, and the first stop is a tourist town built around the Statue of Unity.

The Ministry Wants the Awards on the Road

The ministry said on 8 September that it had decided to hold National Film Awards in various parts of the country, taking them beyond the national capital. The Ekta Nagar night, it added, would gather filmmakers, actors, technicians and other artists and embody the slogan Ek Bharat, Shreshtha Bharat.

That is a standing change in how the state talks about the ceremony, not a one-line excuse for a closed hall. The awards, instituted in 1954, honour feature films, non-feature films and writing on cinema. This edition covers work certified in 2024.

The ministry’s own note does not name Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad or Thiruvananthapuram as the first city on that new map. It names Ekta Nagar, also called Kevadia, in Narmada district. The town sits on the Narmada beside the 182-metre statue of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, inaugurated on 31 October 2018 at a cost close to Rs 3,000 crore.

Usual practice put the night in New Delhi, often at Vigyan Bhawan. A Lok Sabha reply on the Central Vista works records that the Vigyan Bhawan Annexe has already been demolished. The ministry did not cite that building site as the reason for leaving Delhi. It cited a tour of India, then booked a statue town.

They Are Building a Dome in the Bus Bay

Narmada district officials, in a note carried on 8 September, said the ceremony will run against the statue, not in a standing auditorium. A German aluminium structural dome is being put up in the Bus Bay area of the Statue of Unity complex, with seating for about 1,000 guests.

THE TEMPORARY HALL AT EKTA NAGAR

• The guest list: About 92 winners are due to be honoured in one sitting.
• The runtime: Officials have timed the programme at about 75 minutes.
• The structure: A German aluminium structural dome is going up at the Bus Bay.
• The backdrop: The 182-metre Statue of Unity stands over the temporary hall.

Narmada District Collector Ganga Singh chaired a meeting on security, protocol, arrivals and the floor plan. The Gujarat government and the district office are sharing the ground work. For Narmada, the note said, the booking is a chance to put the district on a national stage.

A film awards night is being staged the way a tourist site stages a peak-season show: a short programme, a purpose-built shell, and a monument that already draws the cameras. The President still hands over the lotuses. The room is a bus bay with a dome on it.

Madras Already Had This Night in 1970

Several recaps of the shift called it the first departure from Delhi in 72 years. The file is older than that. The 17th National Film Awards were presented on 21 November 1970 at the University Centenary Auditorium in Madras, for films from 1969, and that night also introduced the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, first given to Devika Rani.

THE ROAD TO 22 SEPTEMBER

1. 1954: The National Film Awards are instituted as the Union government’s honours for Indian cinema.
2. 21 November 1970: The 17th ceremony is held at the University Centenary Auditorium in Madras.
3. 31 October 2018: The Statue of Unity is inaugurated at Kevadia, later renamed Ekta Nagar.
4. 18 July 2026: Juries chaired by Jayaraj, Aseem Sinha and A. Chandrasekhar announce the 72nd winners in New Delhi.
5. 8 September 2026: The ministry names Ekta Nagar as the venue and calls the shift a policy to leave the capital.
6. 22 September 2026: President Murmu is due to present the awards under the new dome.

Madras in 1970 was a film city with a university hall. Ekta Nagar in 2026 is a planned tourism circuit with a statue, a dam view, cruises and a laser show. The two exits from Delhi do not rhyme. One went where cinema was made. The other goes where a monument is sold as the image of unity.

The same complex already took a national cultural booking in November 2025, when Bharat Parv was staged there, that festival’s first edition outside Delhi. The film awards now follow that path. A rotation of Indian cinema, on this evidence, is being routed through a single Gujarat site that has learned how to host the calendar.

Why Not Maharashtra or Kerala?

Filmmaker Rahul Dholakia, who won a National Award for directing Parzania, did not argue that the night must stay in Delhi. He argued that if the habit was being broken, the honour should go to a state that has fed Indian cinema.

I have no particular love lost for Delhi hosting the National Film Awards, but I question the shift to Gujarat. Why Gujarat? Why are you are breaking the tradition of presenting the award in another city/ state- then why not give that honor to a state that has contributed to cinema? Like Maharashtra or Kerela or Tamil Nadu. Even a city like Hyderabad.. why go to Gujarat?

Rahul Dholakia, filmmaker, 8 September 2026

Maharashtra is home to the Hindi and Marathi industries. Kerala and Tamil Nadu have long production cultures. Hyderabad is a Telugu centre. Ahmedabad, not Kevadia, is Gujarat’s own film hub. The ministry’s diversity list in the 8 September note does name Marathi, Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada, Tulu, Garhwali and, for the first time in the non-feature section, Santhali. It still plants the dais beside Patel’s statue.

Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Sanjay Raut put the same choice in party language, asking whether a national programme was being folded into Vibrant Gujarat and saying people would want it in Delhi. The sharper political reading is simpler than a studio map: national nights are accumulating in Gujarat, and Ekta Nagar is being used as an outdoor capital for spectacle.

Gujarat is not missing from the honours. Maaran, directed by Abhishek Jain and produced by Cineman Productions Limited, is Best Gujarati Film. The objection is the address. A statue town is being asked to stand in for the cities that shoot, cut and release the work.

A Film About the Statue Is Already a Winner

The winner list published on 18 July already contained a closed loop that the September venue now makes visible. In the non-feature section, Best Direction for a Statue of Unity film goes to Aanand L Rai for Statue of Unity – Ekta ka Prateek, a Hindi title, with a Swarna Kamal and Rs 3,00,000.

That prize was settled 52 days before the ministry named Ekta Nagar. Nobody had to invent a theme for the backdrop. A film about the statue was already in the bag. The ceremony then moved to the statue’s bus bay.

Rai’s film sits alongside other non-feature honours that the July note listed in full: Bhangaar, by Sumira Roy, is Best Non-Feature Film, in Marathi and English. Ram-Nami, directed by Bharatbala Ganapathy, is Best Documentary. Angen, directed by Ravi Raj Murmu, is Best Debut Film of a Director in that section, and it is the Santhali title the later ministry note flagged as a first.

The feature list has its own political weather. Article 370, the Hindi film from Jio Studios and B62 Studios, directed by Aditya Suhas Jambhale, is Best Feature Film. Randeep Hooda is Best Debut Director for Swatantrya Veer Savarkar. Those two titles will be read, fairly, as a night with a heavy Union theme. The venue does not quiet that reading. It frames it in bronze.

Article 370 Takes Best Feature Film

Jayaraj, chair of the feature jury, announced the 2024 results in New Delhi with Aseem Sinha for non-feature and A. Chandrasekhar for writing on cinema, in the presence of Joint Secretary (Films) Ajay Nagabhushan M.N. The lotuses and cash sit in two bands: Swarna Kamal at Rs 3,00,000 and Rajat Kamal at Rs 2,00,000, shared where the table says so.

MAIN HONOURS FOR 2024 FILMS

Amaran also takes Best Editing for R. Kalaivannan and Best Music Direction (background) for G. V. Prakash Kumar. Kalki 2898 AD takes Best Production Design for Nitin Zihani Choudhary. Pushpa: The Rule Part-02 takes original screenplay for Bandreddi Sukumar and costume design for Deepali Noor and Sheetal Sharma. Stree 2 takes Best Choreography for Vijay Ganguly on Aaj Ki Raat. Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 takes Best Sound Design for Manas Choudhury.

Language prizes include Raayan as Best Tamil Film, Committee Kurrollu as Best Telugu Film, Feminichi Fathima as Best Malayalam Film, Mukkam Post Bombilwadi as Best Marathi Film, Mithya as Best Kannada Film, Srikanth as Best Hindi Film, IMBU as Best Tulu Film and Dholi as Best Garhwali Film. Sanjeev Shrivastava is Best Film Critic. The Best Book on Cinema is Naaniruvude Nimagaagi Naadiruvude Nanagaagi: Kannada Cinemada Thathva matthu Rajakeeya, by Kenchanuru Pradeep Kumar Shetty, published by Mirror Pusthaka.

Narmada Gets a 75-Minute National Booking

The district office is not a bystander. It is building the room, running the motorcade plan, and treating the statue as a set. That is the second-order result of a ministry line about taking cinema to the country: the country, in this first test, means a monument complex that already knows how to light itself for television.

WHAT THE DISTRICT IS LINING UP

• The dais: A temporary aluminium dome on the Statue of Unity Bus Bay, not a permanent cinema hall.
• The clock: A 75-minute programme for winners, guests and the President.
• The command: Collector Ganga Singh’s meeting on security, protocol and arrival routes.
• The pitch: A national identity boost for Narmada, written into the local note.

Winners will travel to a site that is closed to tourists every Monday and sold through soutickets.in on other days. 22 September is a Tuesday, so the campus can open around the dome. The laser show, the viewing gallery and the river cruise are the rest of the product. For one evening they become the wings of a Union awards night.

The ministry still has not named the second city on its new circuit. If the policy is real, some later edition will have to leave Gujarat and land in a film state Dholakia listed, or in a hall that is not a tourist bus bay. Until that happens, the record of this rotation is a single booking: 22 September, Ekta Nagar, a golden lotus under the world’s tallest statue, and a prize already on the books for a film about the statue itself.