CINTAA’s internal fights have now reached the streets of Mumbai. Your take?
It is very unfortunate. From 1958, when CINTAA was born, until now, nothing like this has ever happened. There is no precedent for this kind of behaviour anywhere. It is shameful and disgusting, and least of all did we expect this from senior actors like Poonam Dhillon and Padmini Kolhapure, stealthily stealing documents from an office from which they had no right to remove any belongings, as those were not their personal property.
There was a time when big actors didn’t take interest in CINTAA. Today, superstars are fighting for the seat. Why?
That is not true. Big actors were always the ones who were interested. Mithun Chakraborty, Amjad Khan, Raza Murad, Dara Singh, and Amrish Puri are the kind of people who have headed CINTAA. There was a decline after these individuals left or passed away. Slowly, CINTAA became a place where people just wanted to show off authority, push their weight around, and ignore others. Actors were also suffering because producers altered systems, payment schedules, and working hours. It was difficult for active working actors to fight against producers because they feared their livelihoods would be jeopardized. The earlier actors were so established, saleable, and in demand that they did not have to worry about such risks. Furthermore, Poonam Dhillon and Padmini Kolhapure are not superstars, and I request that you do not address them as such.
What do you think Poonam Dhillon and Padmini Kolhapure have done wrong?
First, under Clause 18F(3) of the constitution, the committee was required to be dissolved when more than 50% of its members resigned. They refused to accept that, co-opted other people, and illegally resurrected another committee. The Labour Commission explicitly informed them that the Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) they held was illegal and that the committee stood dissolved, yet they continue to live in the delusion that they are the Executive Committee.
Second, they filed a lawsuit in court seeking to stay the elections. The court lifted the stay and allowed the elections to proceed, adding a rider that any final verdict from the Dindoshi court would apply to the election results even after candidates were elected. That legal process should have been respected, yet they refuse to recognize or accord any sanctity to this election.
As for why FWICE had to intervene: when a committee has been dissolved and trust is completely lost, who else is supposed to conduct bona fide elections and give them legal sanctity? Naturally, it requires a larger parent body acting as a guardian. This arrangement was challenged in court, and the court granted permission for it. The claim that the committee was not dissolved is simply false; when the authority tells you an EGM is invalid, it directly confirms the committee has no legal standing.
Also, by disaffiliating yourself from the FWICE, which apparently passed in some minutes of some meeting which they couldn’t produce in the court, how are you going to benefit the actors? This is an ego game? Are you here to benefit the actors, or is it your ego game? You want to disaffiliate from an association or federation which is an umbrella federation which has 36 associations under it, and all those associations are part of film and television industry, and you want to disaffiliate yourself? What benefit were you going to get by doing that? Can CINTAA stand alone in a film industry? Is it only of actors? Can only actors make a film?
The disaffiliation that they have passed in some EGM or something like that—I haven’t read the exact thing—that disaffiliation is not lawful. It is not good as per law because it was a dissolved committee. You cannot take decisions in a dissolved committee.
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