On 8 March 2014, in a press conference held at Kolkata, the Worldwide Media group announced that Filmfare Award is debuting in Eastern India to honour the best cinematic artistic talent of the region. In the inaugural installment, awards in 29 categories would be given away at the Science City auditorium, Kolkata on 29 March 2014. The awards would include 21 trophies for Bengali movies and four each for Odia and Assamese films. The four categories for both Odia and Assamese films are Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Actress.[3][4]
The winners would be selected from 102 entries in Bengali films, 36 and 14 entries respectively from the Odia and Assamese films.[3]
Bengali film actor Prosenjit Chatterjee was present as the chief guest in that occasion.[5][6][7] Thereafter two other press conferences followed in Bhubaneswar on 11 March[3][8] and Guwahati on 14 March 2014[9][4] in the presence of Odia film actor Anubhav Mohanty and Assamese film actors Kopil Bora and Zerifa Wahid respectively. From 2017 the award is given only to Bengali film industry.
