Oct 31, Nov 1
Director Saibal Mitra, president of the Directors Association of Eastern India (DAEI) which is one of the 26 guilds that constitute the Federation, said: “We (DAEI) have not received any communication directly from the Registrar of Trade Unions or from the govt on this. He added that out of DAEI’s 400 members, only 100 had EPIC cards handy.
Dey said concerns were raised about the difficulty in tagging a membership card with the correct person. Hence, we were verbally asked to submit EPIC cards for each member who would vote for the elections,” Dey said. Actor-turned BJP MLA Papiya Adhikary told TOI that she was unaware of this EPIC issue. “I have been busy with too many things now and dont’t know about this,” she said. Our secretary has sent a mail to consider these cases,” said director Partha Pratim Banerjee of DAEI. I am happy that such a transparent process has been initiated in Tollywood,” Kundu said.
“In various guilds, there have been allegations of membership cards being issued in lieu of money. Some Bangladeshi citizens came here and got membership cards done. After SIR in Bengal, it is important to be transparent. Meanwhile, the industry is divided over this issue. The other directors’ union received it and informed us on the phone at the last moment. The process started thereafter from our end. We had only one day to furnish the documents. “This is the first time we have been asked to furnish EPIC cards. Despite submission, some of us have not been made eligible. Makeup artist Somnath Kundu agrees that this process is akin to implementing SIR in Tollywood. “We have found too many cases of fake members. There have been instances where card-holding members who never worked in the entertainment sector.