New Delhi:
Goa Congress on Friday accused the organisers of the 50th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) of mismanaging the affairs of India's biggest film festival. The grand-old-party claimed that the height of the festival authority's mismanagement was that Amitabh Bachchan was left stranded on his way out after his driver went missing. It is to be noted that the 77-year-old actor was a guest of honour at the festival's inauguration on November 20.
Goa Congress spokesperson Amarnath Panjikar said, "The gross failure of the administration at IFFI came to the fore when celebrity actor Amitabh Bachchan was made to wait for long after his driver disappeared. This incident happened in the presence of the Chief Minister and the Chief Secretary of Goa and has put the state to shame."
According to a report of IANS, the incident was caught on video which shows Amitabh Bachchan was stranded near his escort car, with the allotted driver missing. Bachchan was accompanied by Chief Minister Pramod Sawant, Goa Chief Secretary Parimal Rai and festival director Chaitanya Prasad, who were equally helpless.
Congress further accused the Goa government of indiscriminately spending money on the event. "There is total mismanagement of IFFI. The decorations were not complete at various locations even after two days since the festival began. This is a complete failure on the part of the Entertainment Society of Goa, which spent crores on venue decorations. The works were not completed deliberately to earn a maximum share of kickback," Panjikar added.
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It is worth mentioning here that the IFFI is hosted annually in Goa by the ESG, a Goa government concern, and the Directorate of Film Festivals, a Central government agency. Nearly 200 films from 76 countries are scheduled to be screened in the nine-day long festival. At IFFI, a selected set of Bachchan's films, including "Sholay", will be showcased as part of a retrospective.
