New Delhi: Actor R. Madhavan has been nominated as president of the Pune-based Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) and as chairman of its governing body.

Madhavan replaces actor and filmmaker Shekhar Kapur, whose tenure as FTII president ended in March this year.

Union youth affairs and sports minister Anurag Thakur congratulated Madhavan on X (formerly Twitter).

The actor responded by saying he would “do [his] very best to live up to all the expectations”.

FTII students had protested a campus visit by Thakur last year when he was information and broadcasting minister. They accused him of fanning “communal hatred”, referring to his hate speech delivered days before riots took place in Delhi in February 2020.

Thakur was seen leading a crowd of BJP supporters into chants of “Desh ke gaddaron ko, goli maro salon ko”, which roughly translates from Hindi as ‘shoot the traitors of the country’.

Madhavan's film, Rocketry: The Nambi Effect, won the National Film Award for best feature film last week. He was its director and writer, and also played the titular role, that of space scientist Nambi Narayanan.

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