New authorization given to Mani Rathnam

Now Mani Ratnam will not have to go to the lush forests of Sri Lanka to recommence the shooting of his ambitious bilingual project having Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Southern super star Vikram in the lead roles.

The Kerala Forest Department has given new permission to continue the shooting inside the Malyatoor forest which can be reached after a two hour journey from the city of Cochin.

Earlier the officials of the Forest Department had canceled the permission after it was found out that the crew had constructed small huts without consulting the officials in the highly sensitive terrain.

The company producing the film had also built some shooting sets inside the forest.

The justification given by the production crew of the film was that the huts were made for protecting the highly expensive equipments used for the shooting from the rain.

Some strict conditions accompany the new sanction given for the continuation of the shooting.

Earlier only Rs.1000 was the amount that was being charged by the Forest department for a period of 20 days to shoot inside the forest.

Now the financier of the film will have to give Rs.10,000 for a single day of production work.

The numbers of vehicles used inside the forest have to be reduced and the crew also has to take care of not littering any materials made of plastic inside the jungle.