Shooting for Bengali TV serials resume following six-day strike

Following an intervention of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who held a meeting with the artists and producers over the rift of payments, the shooting for Bengali TV serials resumed in Kolkata on Saturday.

The deadlock between the Artists’ Forum and Welfare Association of Television Producers in regards to the dispute of payments of the Television actors had stalled the shooting of daily soaps for the last six days. It forced the TV channels into airing old episodes that raised few alarms among the audience.

But Banerjee, who presided the meeting both the sides told reporters on Friday that a conciliation committee has been set up with state Youth Affairs Minister Aroop Biswas as the chairman and veteran actor Soumitra Chatterjee as chief adviser to “look into the complaints,” reported the Press Trust of India.

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The newly formed committee will hold a meeting each month to ensure the smooth functioning of the TV industry, assured Mamata.

Actor Prosenjit Chatterjee, the working president of the Artists’ Forum, Shrikant Mohta of Shree Venkatesh Films and Nispal Singh of Surinder Films were among the representatives of both the sides present in the meeting.

According to Banerjee, the first meeting of the conciliation committee will be held in two days’ time, which will hopefully solve all the pending issues that include the demands of actors for overtime payments.

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“The Artists’ Forum had been demanding salaries by 15th of every month, hourly incentives for toiling over 10 hours and a 14-hour work limit every day,” PTI had reported earlier.

Meanwhile, Leena Gangopadhyay, one of the TV soaps script-writer and a member of the conciliation committee, said, “Now that the shooting has resumed, we are confident that all problems will be resolved sometime soon,” she said.

As per reports, most of the actors and every other performer involved arrived on time at the shoot.