KOLKATA: The ink on the election results was barely dry when seven Tollywood producers shot an email to the EIMPA secretary. Citing a paralysed industry and a shifting political tide, the producers have demanded a four-section emergency meeting within 72 hours or the secretary faces “strict” retaliation. With the defeat of Aroop Biswas, the move is a signal of how Tollywood is aligning itself to the saffron brigade.On Tuesday, EIMPA president Piyaa Sengupta scrubbed the organisation of its TMC ties, rebranding it a “non-political entity” that officially welcomed the new govt. “EIMPA welcomes the new govt. We do not have any written MoU with Federation on taking technicians. We are in the process of drafting a letter to the Federation that its technician mandates will no longer be honoured,” she said.The industry has begun a rapid “social distancing” from Swarup Biswas as filmmakers race to align with the new regime. Many “forced” to share “apology videos” by Swarup believe that Tollywood deserves better than to be held hostage by a single man’s ego. “The federation president became a law unto himself, eclipsing both the industry and even the former CM. When our petition got dismissed in Sept after a long legal battle, I ran out of bandwidth to continue fighting. The federation under his command left me and a lot of others, some of whom were even TMC sympathisers, out of work just because we refused to accept his bizarre diktat. I agreed to share the apology video as a truce to keep my company alive. There were people dependent on me and I had the knowledge that post polls, even if TMC came to power, he would eventually be shown the door,” said actor Parambrata Chattopadhyay.
He added that though he might “not be aligned ideologically with the incoming dispensation”, he respects the people’s mandate. “If the new govt can work towards the development of business and industries in the state, especially work towards the betterment of our industry, while accommodating differences in political ideology, and eradicate this ‘ban culture’, I will be the happiest,” he added.Papia Adhikary, the newly elected voice of the constituency who defeated Aroop, has declared the Federation’s era of “dictatorship” over. Her roadmap for revival is aggressive – vowing to end the industry’s culture of bans.”Swarup is outright from the time I won the elections. We have to get the right people to probe into how Rahul Banerjee died. Those who stalled serials where Sabitri Chattopadhyay and Madhabi Mukherjee worked should have come forward and offered them roles. Just uttering some sentences to warm up the market won’t work,” she said.
