NEW DELHI: The 59th National Film Awards ceremony and presentation of the prestigious Dadasaheb Phalke Award to thespian Soumitra Chatterjee will have a live simulcast on television, radio, and the internet this time.

The awards will be presented by Vice President Hamid Ansari at the award ceremony, which will be held at Vigyan Bhavan. It will be telecast live on the national network at DD One, the international channel DD India, and on DD News from 5 pm. There will be a repeat telecast on 4 May on DD Bharati from 8 pm.

In addition, the ceremony will be broadcast from 5.25 pm onwards on All India Radio‘s Rajdhani channel in Delhi; FM Rainbow in Delhi, Hyderabad and Jalandhar; Radio Kashmir; AIR stations in Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Guwahati and Kolkata; and FM Gold in Kolkata.

Live webcast will be shown on www.dff.nic.in with a link from mib.nic.in.

The National Film Awards are traditionally given away by the President and this is one of the few times since the awards were introduced that they are being given away by the Vice President as President Pratibha Devisingh Patil is on a trip to Seychelles and South Africa.