Sreelekha Mitra, nominated for best supporting actor (female) for Ashchorjyo Prodeep at the Zee Bangla Gaurav Samman 2014, is upset because her name wasn’t even mentioned during the awards function at Netaji Indoor Stadium on Saturday evening. A shocked Sreelekha tells t2 why the channel owes her an explanation.

“I got a phone call from an official of Zee Bangla and was told that I have been nominated for best supporting actor for Ashchorjyo Prodeep. After a week I got an official letter confirming the same. Though I got the hint that I was not winning the award, I still went to cheer for my colleagues. Zee is like an extended family for me. I have been a part of Mirakkel for many years. But I was shocked that my name wasn’t even announced in the category. I wasn’t expecting to win. All I’m saying is why was my name not announced? I felt insulted and humiliated. After working for so long in this industry I don’t deserve this. I have lost faith in this award and I demand an explanation. I am a small fry compared to the big names of Tollywood. I don’t consider myself to be an important part of the industry. I don’t belong to any lobby. I am not even a star, I am an artiste and it’s my right to know why was I subjected to this humiliation,” she said.

When we put this to Rajorshi Dey, programming head of Zee Bangla Cinema, he said: “Since last year we had skipped Zee Bangla Gaurav Samman, this year we included films from the last one-and-a-half years. At any awards function the maximum number of artistes or films nominated in a category are four-five. This year, in every category we had 12 nominations. So it was impossible to call out all the names and show their clippings due to time crunch. Instead, we are doing a special episode every Sunday 6pm where all the names of the nominated candidates are aired. Not just Sreelekha, we had to skip announcing many other names. We chose to announce only the top four names that got the highest number of votes.”

But this was not communicated to Sreelekha by the hosts at the awards.