72nd National Film Awards Move to Ekta Nagar: Ceremony Leaves Delhi for the First Time in 72 Years

🗞️ Why in News President Droupadi Murmu will confer the 72nd National Film Awards on 22 September 2026 at Ekta Nagar (Kevadia), Narmada district, Gujarat, near the Statue of Unity. It is the first time in the 72-year history of the awards that the ceremony moves outside New Delhi, where Vigyan Bhawan has been the standing venue. A total of 92 winners will receive their honours.

The Ceremony in One Table

The Marquee Winners

Article 370, a political drama on the constitutional history of Jammu and Kashmir, is the film of the ceremony, taking Best Feature Film alongside Best Actress. The Best Actor jointly goes to a veteran of Malayalam cinema and a Hindi-cinema lead, matching a pattern the National Film Awards have followed for decades: honouring craft across languages in the same year.

Why “First Time Outside Delhi” Matters

Since 1954, the awards ceremony has been a Delhi event. Its home has been Vigyan Bhawan, on Maulana Azad Road, where two generations of Indian cinema were felicitated. Moving the ceremony to Ekta Nagar does three things at once.

1. It signals the Government’s cultural-tourism strategy for the Statue of Unity precinct. Ekta Nagar was formally renamed from Kevadia in 2022, at the same time that a dedicated Ekta Nagar Railway Station and a set of themed gardens were commissioned around the statue.
2. It decouples national cultural ceremony from the Capital. The Republic Day parade, the Padma Awards, the Bharat Ratna, the President’s Colours ceremonies: most of India’s federal ceremonial protocol is still in Delhi. The National Film Awards are the first to make the move.
3. It gives the awards a landscape frame. The statue faces the Sardar Sarovar Dam on the Narmada; a ceremony on that river-and-hills stage is a very different visual proposition from a Vigyan Bhawan auditorium.

The Statue of Unity: The Setting, in Facts

Ekta Nagar, since 2020, has hosted the annual Rashtriya Ekta Diwas parade on 31 October, the National Unity Day marking Patel’s birth anniversary.

The National Film Awards: The Institution

The National Film Awards are India’s principal state-conferred film honours. The lineage runs as follows.

Origin and Custody

• First edition: 1954, then called the State Awards for Films, presented by President Rajendra Prasad on 10 October 1954 at Vigyan Bhavan.
• Administered originally by the Directorate of Film Festivals (DFF) under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.
• DFF merged in 2022 into the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC), which now administers the awards alongside Films Division, Children’s Film Society of India (CFSI) and the National Film Archive of India (NFAI), following the merger of all four autonomous film media units of the Ministry under a single umbrella.
• Ministry: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.

The Categories, in Brief

• Feature Films. Best Feature Film, and the language-wise Best Feature Films in the constitutional and other Indian languages. This is what gives the awards their pan-Indian character.
• Non-Feature Films. Documentaries, short films, animation, promotional films.
• Best Writing on Cinema. Best Book on Cinema and Best Film Critic.
• Special awards for individuals. Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Music Direction, and technical crafts.
• Dadasaheb Phalke Award. The highest honour in Indian cinema, instituted in 1969 on the birth centenary year of Dadasaheb Phalke, and awarded for lifetime contribution. It is announced separately and is not part of the numbered National Film Awards ceremony’s competitive list.

Jury Composition

Two juries evaluate the entries. A Feature Films Jury and a Non-Feature Films Jury, each headed by an eminent film personality as chairperson and comprising members drawn from film-making, criticism, technique and the broader cultural field. A separate jury sits for Best Writing on Cinema. The juries are constituted by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and are advisory to the awards committee.

Why the Ceremony’s Language of Titles Matters

The National Film Awards do the one thing the two major private-sector Indian film honours do not: they honour work in the regional languages on the same footing as work in Hindi. Best Feature Film winners across the last decade include Marathi, Tamil, Malayalam, Assamese and Kannada films. That is why Bramayugam, a Malayalam-language horror set in a 17th-century mana, sits beside Chandu Champion, a Hindi-language biopic on the Paralympian Murlikant Petkar, in the same jointly-awarded Best Actor citation. It is also why the awards enjoy a status among practitioners that no private award has matched.

UPSC Relevance

GS Paper 1. Indian culture will cover the salient aspects of Art Forms, Literature and Architecture from ancient to modern times. Awards, honours and cultural institutions are examinable within this scope.

The Mains framing. The strongest reading is that the National Film Awards are the institutional expression of a linguistically federal cinema. In an era when platform economics push production toward the largest single market, a state-conferred honour system that reads twenty-three constitutional languages on equal terms is a policy tool for pluralism, not only a cultural ceremony. The venue change to Ekta Nagar is a smaller argument on top: the Government is deliberately moving national ceremonial life outside the Capital.

A question worth preparing. “The National Film Awards have been conferred by the President of India since 1954. Discuss their significance in preserving India’s linguistic and cultural plurality, with reference to recent institutional reorganisation of the film media units. (250 words)”

The counterpoint to hold. Moving a ceremony from Vigyan Bhawan to Ekta Nagar is a symbolic decision, and symbolic decisions cut both ways. Awards are only as authoritative as the perceived independence of the jury and the credibility of the citations; moving the venue does not by itself add to that credibility. The reform to argue for is transparency of jury reasoning, timely conferment (this year’s ceremony still relates to films of 2024), and stable custodianship after the merger of the media units.

📌 Facts Corner — Knowledgepedia

Prelims, statement-ready facts:

• The 72nd National Film Awards ceremony is scheduled for 22 September 2026 at Ekta Nagar (Kevadia), Narmada district, Gujarat.
• It is the first National Film Awards ceremony held outside New Delhi in the awards’ 72-year history.
• President Droupadi Murmu will confer the awards; 92 winners are to be honoured.
• Best Feature Film goes to Article 370; Best Actress to Yami Gautam for Article 370.
• Best Actor is jointly awarded to Mammootty for Bramayugam and Kartik Aaryan for Chandu Champion.
• Best Popular Film Providing Wholesome Entertainment goes to Kalki 2898 AD.
• The National Film Awards were instituted in 1954, then called the State Awards for Films, and were first presented by President Rajendra Prasad on 10 October 1954 at Vigyan Bhavan.
• The traditional ceremony venue has been Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi, since 1954.
• The Directorate of Film Festivals administered the awards until it was merged into the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) in 2022.
• The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting is the nodal ministry for the National Film Awards.
• The Dadasaheb Phalke Award, India’s highest honour in cinema, was instituted in 1969 and is awarded for lifetime contribution.
• The Statue of Unity, dedicated to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, is 182 metres tall and was unveiled on 31 October 2018.
• The Statue of Unity is located on Sadhu Bet island in the Narmada river, and was sculpted by Ram V. Sutar.
• Kevadia was renamed Ekta Nagar in 2022; Rashtriya Ekta Diwas is observed annually at Ekta Nagar on 31 October.

Prelims, the traps:

• The Dadasaheb Phalke Award is announced separately and is not part of the numbered National Film Awards competitive list; do not conflate.
• The awards were called State Awards for Films from 1954; the name National Film Awards came into standard use later. The first presenter was the President, Rajendra Prasad, not the Vice-President.
• NFDC now administers the awards after the 2022 merger of the four film media units; the DFF as a standalone body no longer exists.
• The Statue of Unity is the tallest statue in the world; the Spring Temple Buddha in China is the second-tallest and is commonly used as a distractor.
• Ekta Nagar is in Narmada district of Gujarat, not in Kutch or Bharuch; the railway station of the same name serves the site.

Mains, arguments and keywords:

• Frame the National Film Awards as the institutional expression of a linguistically federal cinema in an era of platform-driven Hindi consolidation.
• Note the 2022 merger of DFF, NFDC, Films Division and CFSI under a single umbrella as an institutional reform in cultural administration.
• Symbolism of Ekta Nagar: decoupling of national ceremonial life from the Capital; unity narrative around Sardar Patel; Rashtriya Ekta Diwas continuity.
• Reforms to argue for: transparency of jury citations, shorter time-lag between film year and conferment, protection of regional-language categories after institutional merger.
• Keywords: state-conferred honour, linguistically federal cinema, cultural federalism, Dadasaheb Phalke Award, Rashtriya Ekta Diwas, cinema soft power.

Interview, be ready for:

• “Why do the National Film Awards matter more than industry awards?” Because they honour twenty-three constitutional languages on equal footing; no private awards ecosystem matches that pluralism.
• “What was the 2022 reorganisation?” Directorate of Film Festivals, NFDC, Films Division and CFSI were merged under a single umbrella; NFDC now administers what DFF used to.
• “Why Ekta Nagar for a film awards ceremony?” To decouple national cultural ceremony from the Capital and anchor a cultural-tourism precinct around the Statue of Unity.
• “Is the Dadasaheb Phalke Award a National Film Award?” It is announced under the same institutional umbrella but as the separate highest cinema honour, for lifetime contribution, and is not part of the numbered ceremony’s competitive list.

Sources: The Hindu, PIB, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Indian Express

Source: 72nd National Film Awards Move to Ekta Nagar: Ceremony Leaves Delhi for the First Time in 72 Years — Ujiyari.com | Free UPSC & State PCS Current Affairs