A still from the film Lagaan and (above) shooting for the documentary in progress at Nehru Chowk in Patna on Tuesday. Picture by Nagendra Kumar Singh

Patna, May 24: When Gauri of Champaner village joined Bhuvan and his team in their challenge to win a tax waiver, the British empire was forced to come down on its knees. Now, the Lagaan girl has joined the campaign for a special status for Bihar and the impact of the call on the central government remains to be seen.

Gracy Singh is working with Ravi Kissen and Smriti Irani, among others, in a documentary pressing for special status for the state.

Janata Dal (United) launched a signature campaign for special status for Bihar, near Patna Junction roundabout on April 20 this year. The campaign pledged to collect at least one crore signatures to build pressure on the central government to grant special economic status to Bihar. The collected signatures will be sent to President Pratibha Patil in the last week of June.

OAC Production Private Limited, a film production house in Mumbai, has decided to be a part of this campaign and is making a 20-minute documentary on why Bihar should get the special status. The crew of the documentary was in Patna to shoot a portion of the film. The major part of the documentary has been shot in Mumbai. The documentary will be launched on 29th of this month and then it will be screened in all the districts of Bihar. The director of the documentary film is Shivraj Deval.

Besides Gracy Singh, Ravi Kissen and Smriti Irani, Pankaj Berry, Sudesh Berry, Sunil Sinha, Shankar Singh and Sanjeev Ratan, the scriptwriter of the documentary, are also taking part in the project.

On being asked why he has used these actors in the documentary, Sanjeev said: “When actors become part of any documentary, the interest of the people automatically rises and they pay a lot more attention to the message. The impact is not the same when a documentary is shot with unknown actors.”

He further said: “My main motto is to make people aware and pressurise the central government to grant Bihar a special economic status and stop the brain drain from the state.”

About the efforts carried out by the Nitish Kumar government in Bihar, Sanjeev said: “In the past six years, Nitish Kumar has done everything possible to make Bihar the number one state in India. Now he has launched this signature campaign but I feel the local people are still not aware of the real purpose of this campaign. I thought a documentary on the topic would take the message to all the districts of Bihar and make people aware of the reasons behind the campaign and the advantages of the special status.”

Sanjay Singh, the producer of the documentary, said: “Since I am from Bihar, I want my state to get the special status and it is not possible if the people are not awakened. I feel media plays a very important role in educating the masses. By seeing this documentary, people will know about the advantages that a special state gets, be it in economic of social aspect. For instance, if Bihar gets the status of a special state, then investors will invest more here, which in return will help in the economic growth of the people of Bihar and push it forward in the race to become the number one state of India.”