Madhur Bhandarkar to be honoured with Gangasharan Singh presidential award

After bagging National Awards and other prestigious awards for his hard-hitting realistic movies, now noted Bollywood filmmaker Madhur Bhandarkar has been selected for Gangasharan Singh presidential award. The award will be given to the filmmaker for his contributions to Hindi cinema by the Ministry of Human Resource Development under the Hindi Service Awards Scheme. Madhur will be honoured with the Gangasharan Singh Award, which comprises of a certificate and a cheque of rupees one lakh, on June 20 by President Pratibha Patil at the Rashtrapati Bhavan. Besides the director, 27 other people from different walks of life, including Girish Karnad, Shyam Benegal and Pankaj Pachauri, have also been selected for the prestigious award. This will be the fourth time when Madhur will be felicitated by the President of India as in 2002 and 2005, former President Dr APJ Kalam had presented him with the presidential awards for Chandni Bar and Page 3, respectively, and in 2006 Patil honoured him with an award for Traffic Signal. Expressing his happiness over being nominated for another presidential award, an elated Madhur said, "Over the years not just the audience or the industry but also the Government of our country has supported and acknowledged my work. I am honoured and thankful to the HRD ministry for finding me befitting for this award".