Dubbing the annual ceremony too long and too drab, he has asked the Directorate of Film Festivals (DFF) to undertake a major rethink, as a result of which the process has been inordinately delayed, throwing the film industry into confusion.

Apart from reducing the number of awards, which touched 100 last year, the I&B Ministry will be asking film stars, Jnanpith award winners, eminent painters and writers to ``assist'' the President in giving away the awards. The cost of the celebrities' stay in the Capital for the event will be picked up by private sponsors. The aim: To have the National Film Awards talked of in the same breath as the Filmfare awards, but stopping short of complete tamasha in deference to thePresident of India.

Mahajan came up with this brief immediately after the International Film Festival in Hyderabad in January which he complained lacked both the ``international'' and the ``festive'' elements. The Ministry then asked DFF to recommend a reduction in the number of awards, especially categories such as Best Ethnographic Film where no award had been presented for over five years. The reasoning was that this would also reduce the expenditure on the jury's month-long stay in the Capital by at least Rs 40,000.

The DFF referred the decision to its 12-member advisory committee, comprising, among others, FabIndia's Bim Bissel, Shatrughan Sinha's friend and film producer Pahlaj Nihalani, Kannada award winner Girish Kasavaralli and Assamese director Santwana Bordoloi. The panel has endorsed the reduction in the awards, suggesting especially the clubbing of certain categories.

This will mean the awards ceremony will probably be pushed back from July, when it was held last year. That too was latebecause of the change in government and fresh deliberations over the composition of the jury. The last date for receiving applications usually is March 31. Three years ago, the President started giving away only the main awards -- 17 in number -- because S D Sharma was ``unable to stand for so long''. The others were distributed by the I&B Minister.