Filmmaker Madhur Bhandarkar, has been awarded the Presidential honour for his contribution towards Hindi cinema. The Ministry of Human Resource Development, India wanted to acknowledge Bhandarkar’s contributions to Hindi language cinema under the Hindi Service Awards Scheme and he was thus awarded with the Presidential Award, Gangasharan Singh Award, by President Pratibha Patil at the Rashtrapati Bhavan, New Delhi today. This is Bhandarkar’s fourth Presidential award. In 2002 and 2005 Dr APJ Abdul Kalam presented him the presidential award for his films Chandni Bar and Page 3 respectively, and later in 2006 President Pratibha Patil awarded him the presidential award for Traffic Signal.

The award comprises of a certificate and a cheque of Rs 1, 28,000. Apart from the filmmakers, other personalities to have won awards include Girish Karnad, Shyam Benegal and media person Pankaj Pachauri.