In the wake of actor Rahul Arunoday Banerjee's tragic death during a shoot, Tollywood may soon see changes in on-set safety, with producers and artistes jointly agreeing to introduce a new Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), including mandatory insurance for every film.
The Indian Motion Picture Producers' Association (IMPA) and the Artists Forum held a meeting and a decision was taken which aimed at renewing and strengthening safety norms for actors. It was agreed that the insurance amount will be linked to a film's budget – an unprecedented move in the industry.
Meeting Highlights
The meeting was attended by IMPA president Piya Sengupta, chairman Ritabrata Bhattacharya, and members including Jisshu U Sengupta, Rana Sarkar, and Pradip Nandi, among several others. Representing the Artists' Forum were executive president Prosenjit Chatterjee, general secretary Shantilal Mukhopadhyay, Bidipta Chakraborty, and others.
Key Decisions
Rana Sarkar said the new SOP would go beyond insurance and several preventive measures have been discussed to avoid accidents on set. The written version of this will be shared soon. Prosenjit Chatterjee dedicated the meeting to the memory of Rahul Arunoday. Echoing his sentiment, Jisshu Sengupta said that Rahul has shown them that everyone was doing the same things on set and somewhere it might have become a little disorganised.
Consensus Between Producers and Actors
Prosenjit, Piya, and Jisshu jointly stated that dialogue can resolve all problems, and that this was one of the rare occasions when actors and producers reached a consensus. Apart from safety, behaviour on set was also discussed. After Rahul's death, Rana had requested the IMPA president to consider banning alcohol consumption and smoking at shooting locations. Addressing whether this was discussed, Bidipta said that issues like these will be added to the code of conduct. Everything is still at the discussion stage.
