NEW DELHI: Union Minister Prakash Javadekar today announced that film star Rajinikanth who primarily works in Tamil cinema will receive the country's highest film honour for 2019. The 51st Dadasaheb Phalke Award will be conferred on 3rd May, along with the National Film Awards.

The prestigious award which is Indian cinema's highest honour for an artist had been postponed last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The award was last handed out in 2018 to fellow superstar Amitabh Bachchan.

Javadekar said that the jury which picked Rajinikanth for the top award included singers Asha Bhosle and Shankar Mahadevan, actors Mohanlal and Biswajeet, and filmmaker Subhash Ghai. Rajinikanth is already a recipient of the Padma Bhushan (2000) and Padma Vibhushan (2016).

Political analysts are wondering if it just a co-incident that the announcement comes days ahead of the April 6 Assembly polls in Tamil Nadu (TN) where the actor has a massive following among the people or it was well thought off. 

When this question was posed to Javadekar that the announcement comes just ahead of the assembly polls in TN, the minister shot back, "This is an award related to the film world and Rajinikanth has been working for 50 years. One must ask proper questions."

The family of seventy-year-old superstar born as Shivaji Rao Gaekwad in 1950, in a Marathi family in Bangalore, hails from Pune in Maharashtra. Since his schooling days, he spent a lot of time acting in plays and later even after getting a job in the Bangalore Transport Service (BTS) as a bus conductor, he continued to pursue acting assignments in plays. 

When he decided to take up an acting course in the newly formed Madras Film Institute after coming across an advertisement, though his family was not fully supportive of his decision due to their precarious financial condition, however, his friend and co-worker driver Raj Bahadur motivated him and even financially supported him during this phase. Since his debut in the 1975 Tamil film Apoorva Ragangal, Rajinikanth has acted in hundreds of films and delivered superhit films such as Billu, Muthu, Baashha, Sivaji, and Enthiran.

Reacting to the news of him being honoured with the 51st Dadasaheb Phalke Award, apart from thanking many people including his family, Rajnikant said that, "I dedicate this award to my friend, bus driver Raj Bahadur, for recognising my acting ability and providing encouragement." 

Although the actor has never made it public, he is still very much in touch with Bahadur and meets him regularly, almost every time he goes to Bangalore.