Progressive Writers' Group set to gain control of FWA

It was a fiercely fought election. Canvassing had been going on for days, emails, and even text messages were resorted to. Hello, we are not talking about elections to government. We are talking about polling that was held yesterday (6 May 2012) in Mumbai for the office bearers and committee of the Film Writers Association (FWA), the premier body for TV and Film screen writers in India. Two groups stood on opposite ends of the spectrum: Writers’ Guild of India (WGI) and the Progressive Writers Group (PWG). Both representing different interest groups. The WGI is led by Ashfaque Khopekar while the PWG is led by Vinay Shukla, both bidding to become president of the FWA. At the time of writing, the results that had trickled in indicated that the PWG had pocketed some of the posts while the WGI was trailing. Apparently, Vinay Shukla was successful in his attempt to become president while Kamlesh Pandey was elected as general secretary, Rajesh Dubey and Sameer Anjan got the vice-president’s post. Sudhakar Sharma’s bid to become treasurer, Robin Bhatt and Naini Kazmi’s shot at the joint secretary’s posts were given the thumbs up FWA’s members. With exception of Naini Kazmi and Sudhakar Sharma, those elected were from the PWG. “We have founded Progressive Writers Group (Since 2008) and are fighting for our rights since then. Our group wants to make sure that each and every writer gets their deserving amount and importance for their work. All I can say at the moment is who ever owns the executive committee, should keep in mind the thoughts which we have towards writers,” shares Kamlesh Pandey. Keep checking this space to update yourself on the latest results for members of the executive committee.