New Delhi: The 50th International Film Festival of India (IFFI) will honour superstar Rajinikanth with a special Icon of Golden Jubilee award, Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar announced on Saturday.

The festival will be held in Goa from November 20 to 28 with close to 250 films from various countries to be screened at the premier movie extravaganza.

The minister also announced celebrated French actor Isabelle Huppert as the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award.

In its golden jubilee year, the festival will screen 50 films by 50 female filmmakers to acknowledge the contribution of women in cinema, Javadekar said. Russia will be the partner country at the festival this year.

Dadasaheb Phalke Award winner Amitabh Bachchan's selected seven or eight films will also be showcased at the movie gala.

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Bengaluru: Leader of Opposition in the Assembly R. Ashoka has accused the Congress government of using the hijab issue to placate what he described as discontent among minority voters after the Davanagere by-election.

In a post on X on Wednesday, Ashoka alleged that the state government, instead of addressing issues such as price rise, corruption, farmers’ distress and law and order, was attempting to retain its minority vote base by reviving the hijab issue.

Referring to the 2022 dress code introduced by the BJP government, which prohibited hijab in schools and colleges, Ashoka said the Karnataka High Court had upheld the policy and emphasised the importance of discipline in educational institutions.

He questioned the Congress government’s move to revisit the issue and asked whether setting aside the court-backed policy to benefit one community could be described as secularism.

Ashoka further alleged that while the government was willing to permit hijab, it continued to prohibit saffron shawls.

He accused the government of dividing students on religious lines rather than treating schools and colleges as spaces of equality.

Drawing a comparison with Mamata Banerjee’s government in West Bengal, Ashoka claimed that excessive appeasement politics had harmed the state and warned that the Congress in Karnataka could face a similar political response.

He said voters in Karnataka would teach the Congress a lesson for what he termed “vote-bank politics” and for compromising constitutional and judicial principles.