For decades, the Film Award shows have promoted nepotism in Bollywood. They have given Best actor awards to the top heroes and have ignored the second rung.

Each Film Award has their set of favourites who keep attending, performing at the shows and then walks away with a statuette.

There are three factors and at least two of them need to work in tandem for getting a film award in Bollywood. 1. You need to be friendly to the media and to the organisation, 2. You must attend the show and 3. You must agree to dance at the show.

Akshay Kumar surely didn’t know how to react when Airlift was overlooked and Rustom was considered as the best performance of 2016 by the jury of the National Film Awards. Clearly, the jury needs some education in filmmaking and acting.

Akshay Kumar has won only two Filmfare awards so far, one for Best Villain in Ajnabee (in 2002) and Best Comedian in 2006 for Garam Masala. When it came to IIFA (Indian International Film Awards), he won the best comedian awards twice in 2005 (Mujhse Shaadi Karogi) and in 2006 (Garam Masala). IIFA agreed with Filmfare and gave him in the Best Villain Award in 2002 for Ajnabee too.

Akshay has never got a Best Actor award from either Filmfare or IIFA. He got a Best Actor award once from Stardust in 2009 for a film called 8X10 Tasveer which was incidentally a colossal flop at the box office.

It is quite a task to look for awards that were given to Akshay Kumar as a lead actor. Most of the awards that have come his way, were awards for being an entertainer or a token for attending the show.

Akshay Kumar has been continuously and consistently ignored by the jury of the award shows. He has been ignored so much that it has almost become a habit.

There was a time when he used to come and attend the award shows with his wife Twinkle Khanna. But one day, the snub got to him and he stopped attending all of them.

He has been asked numerous times about why nobody considers him worthy of a Best Actor Award and he has cleverly eschewed the question. Most of the times he avoided creating a controversy by blaming himself for not getting an award. 

The tables turned this year.

This time, Akshay Kumar has got a National Award for a performance which definitely doesn’t even qualify for a National level competition.

What has he done in Rustom that he has been adjudged a better actor than everybody else in India? I am sure even Akshay Kumar is asking himself the question. Rustom? Why Rustom?

The National Award jury surely was not in their right state of mind when they were finalising the award. They have given the award to a deserving actor for a non-deserving performance.

Pretty much like the rest of the award shows in the country. 

The outsiders in Bollywood: Akshay Kumar and Shah Rukh Khan. One gets all the award and the other gets ignored. The tables have finally turned this year.

The jury conveniently forgot overlooked that Akshay Kumar acted in another film Airlift which apart from being hailed a great film is considered as one of the finest performances of the actor. The film was a commercial success too which indicates that the audience accepted it too. 

But alas, the jury seemed to be a in a great hurry to bring the sanctity of the awards show down to other filmi award shows in Bollywood.

Or, may be they were trying to deliver some kind of poetic justice to Shah Rukh Khan.

Shah Rukh Khan’s performances in Dear Zindagi and Fan have been ignored by the National Award jury this year and the same Shah Rukh Khan holds the record for winning the maximum number of Filmfares!

This is how it feels, man!

But I guess, the National Award Jury forgot that we have always held them in high regard. This year they have embarrassed themselves and Akshay Kumar by giving him an award for Rustom.

I am now curious. Who are these people and what were they doing while finalising the award?