`Poet' Vajpayee nominated for Screen award

`Poet' Vajpayee nominated for Screen award
EXPRESs NEWS SERVICE

MUMBAI, JAN 12: Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has been nominated for the Best Lyricist of 1999 in the Non-Film Music section of the sixth Screen-Videocon Awards to be presented on January 23 at the Andheri Sports Complex in Mumbai.

Vajpayee has been nominated for his poetry in HMV's Nayi Disha, a non-film ghazal album which has music by Jagjit Singh and Lataji-Premji. While Jagjit Singh has rendered most of the ghazals, Alka Yagnik has also rendered a couple of the VVIP poet's lyrics.

The nominations were decided by a jury headed by Vishal Bharadwaj and consisting of Santosh Nair, Sapna Mukherjee, Arun Bakshi and Divya Dutta.Not only that, the album Nayi Disha has won nominations in all the categories of non-film music section such as the best non-film album, best singer (Jagjit Singh) and best composer (Jagjit, Lataji-Premji).

This is the first time in the history of Indian Cinema that a Prime Minister gets a nomination for an entertainment award.