PANAJI: The sharp differences between the state and Centre could crop up at the meeting convened by the Ministry for Information and Broadcasting at New Delhi on July 28, to discuss issues pertaining to the International Film Festival of India 2010, especially on topics such as appointment of an event management agency and fine tuning of the Memorandum of Understanding between the Entertainment Society of Goa and the directorate of film festivals.

The Chief Secretary, Mr Sanjay Kumar Srivastava and the Secretary for Information and Publicity, Mr Narendra Kumar are expected to participate in the meeting on behalf of the state government. The meeting will be chaired by the I&B secretary.
The agenda for the meeting, among other things proposes to find out the feasibility of having a professional event management agency for the IFFI 2010, taking into consideration the shortcomings felt during the management of various events like opening and closing ceremonies, last year. “It is further proposed that professional event management agency can bring professionalism in the management of events,” the agenda observes.
A highly-placed state government official maintained that the Chief Minister, Mr Digambar Kamat had done away with the appointment of an expensive event management agency for IFFI 2009 to cut the costs and had appointed a committee, which included members of the governing council of the Entertainment Society of Goa. “This committee had successfully carried out the work of an event management agency,” the official said, adding that efforts of the central government to thrust an event management agency on the state government will be opposed. “After all, the state government is incurring heavy expenditure to the tune of Rs 5-6 crore for this film festival,” the official noted.
The state government official also took objection to the fine tuning of the MoU pertaining to IFFI 2010 stating that the Chief Minister had tried to stick to the contents of the MoU followed for IFFI 2009 and did not want to come out with any additional suggestions for the MoU of the IFFI 2010.
The Information and Broadcasting Ministry’s agenda of the July 28 meeting states that the MoU between the ESG and the DFF needs to be fine tuned to address the shortcomings found in the previous film festivals such as hospitality, marketing and media management. The agenda further calls for a deliberation on lack of prompt feeding of inputs to the media, and on the part of the public relation agencies as appointed for the previous film festivals.
The highlight of the agenda is to consider interim recommendations of the expert committee constituted by the Ministry for Information and Broadcasting for organising the IFFI. This includes introduction of best actor/ actress award, enhancing the competition section to include feature films from all continents and increasing the number of feature films in the competition section up to 18.
It may be recalled that these three recommendations have already been accepted by the governing council of the Entertainment Society of Goa. However, the governing council had decided to deliberate in detail on the pros and cons of the long-term recommendations of the expert committee of I&B Ministry.
Interestingly, agenda for the July 28 meeting mentions the red carpet event at the IFFI 2009, wherein the issue of inner conflict within the red carpet committee of the ESG had come to the fore and which was eventually spilt out to the press along with photographs of the ESG committee members physically fighting among themselves for prominence on the red carpet. The red carpet committee was chaired by Mr Chandrakant Kavalekar and co-ordinated by the Goan film producer, Rajendra Talak.
Furthermore, the agenda speaks about discussion on the suggestions made by a committee headed by the noted cinematographer, A K Bir about media centre and media management. It also includes creation of a monitoring cell to monitor proper implementation of the MoU.  
The highly-placed state government official said that the I&B Ministry is expected to provide a level playing field to the ESG during the organisation of IFFI 2010. “The Centre should understand that the state is bearing major expenditure for the mega film event and therefore, cannot be pressurised to do things as per the whims and fancies of the bureaucrats in the I&B Ministry.”
Incidentally, last year, the CEO of the ESG, Mr Manoj Srivasatava had stated that the powers of the ESG as regards the organisation of IFFI have increased. “We hope these powers are not withdrawn by the Centre at the July 28 meeting,” the government official stated.
Surprisingly, taking a dig at the press, the agenda item (f) maintains, “The meeting should device strategies to ensure better star presence and their press conferences on daily basis. This will ensure a daily dose of press reportage, as otherwise the hungry press will cook its own fodder for the next day’s edition.”