Rajya Sabha MP Rajeev Shukla has in a letter to Information and Broadcasting Minister Jaipal Reddy expressed concern over the "ambiguous procedure" used to select national film award winners.

"Following from what seems like a haphazard criteria for selection of jury, including the jury's chairman, the selection of award winners becomes even indiscriminate and the jury appears to pick and choose winners based on personal choices or even vested interests of jury members," Shukla said in his letter.

This was one reason, Shukla pointed out, why the national awards have often been mired in controversy, resulting in jury members resigning.

He appealed to Reddy to ensure that "only people of utmost eminence in society with no personal bias are selected as chairman and members of the awards jury".

"It should not be mandatory that the jury be headed by any person from the film industry, for these very persons may have a vested interest in a prospective award winner," said Shukla.

The jury chairman for the feature films category this year was director Sudhir Mishra.

The best actor award this year went to Saif Ali Khan, best actress to Kannada heroine Thaara and the best film to Madhur Bhandarkar's "Page 3".