Nepali media and social media has been abuzz about IFFA in Nepal for the past week, as concerns over the cost of hosting the event appear to have derailed plans for Nepal to do so.
News of NTB co-hosting IIFA awards drew much negative criticism right from its announcement.
Such reactions in a country, which has such colossal Bollywood fan following, were a major setback for NTB and Kathmandu Metropolitan City, one of the co-sponsors of the event.
As a result, the issue of Nepal hosting the IFFA was dragged into a parliamentary committee.
The International Relations and Human Rights Committee of the Parliament on Tuesday directed the government to cancel its plan to host IFFA 2019.
A cabinet meeting held on June 20 had permitted the hosting of the awards in Kathmandu, and it was later revealed that Nepal was to spend around Rs 450 million in doing so.
Nepal was to take care of the airfare, hotel stays and security for the guests as well, increasing the cost markedly.
"We had formed a negotiating committee and were negotiating the cost we to be borne by us," said Deepak Raj Joshi, NTB's CEO.
According to Joshi, the plan behind hosting such an expensive award was to promote tourism in Nepal. Nepal has announced the year 2020 as the year to visit Nepal, aiming to receive two million tourists during that time.
"Bollywood has a huge fan following around them, and we were hoping to cash on in the popularity of the actors visiting many of our destinations," said Joshi.
Apart from hosting the awards ceremony, NTB had hoped to attract the attention of Bollywood fans through videos and tweets from popular actors.
However, many Nepali citizens were not happy with the amount of money to be paid to IIFA organiser Witchcraft International Entertainment.
Some Nepalis believe that the parliamentary committee's decision to cancel the event is wrong as they see the main issue as not hosting event itself, but spending a vast amount of money from government coffers to support it.
The IIFA awards have moved around for almost two decades, having been hosted in the likes of London, Madrid, Bangkok and Sri Lanka.
Apart from the general public, those in the Nepali film fraternity and many lawmakers also expressed their dissatisfaction in the cost of hosting such an event in Nepal.
NTB has said that it will now await the government's final decision, which will have to be made soon as the IIFA is to expected to take place in August.
Some have speculated that an informal agreement for Nepal to host the event had been made during Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli's brief visit to India in April.
