Vishal Bhardwaj and Eka Lakhani are among the Indians invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, an appointment that carries full Oscar voting rights.

The Academy extends membership invitations annually, and acceptance places each invitee inside the body that votes on the Oscars from the nominations stage through to the final winners. For the Indian contingent, the invitations translate directly into ballot power in future Academy Award races.

Bhardwaj, the composer, writer and director whose credits span some of the most awarded Hindi films of the past two decades, receives the invitation in a year when Indian cinema's footprint at the Oscars has continued to expand. Lakhani, a costume designer whose work has anchored major Indian productions, joins the Academy's membership alongside him.

What does Academy membership actually change?

The mechanics are straightforward: members vote to determine the Oscar nominees in their branch and then cast ballots for the winners across categories. Each new member adds weight to the voting bloc they represent — directing, music, costume design and so on.

For Indian artists, membership has a compounding effect:

• Indian cinema gains direct representation inside the room where Oscar winners are decided.
• Future nominations for Indian films and craftspeople face a voting body that includes peers who know the work firsthand.
• The Academy's stated diversity push, accelerated in recent years, continues to widen its international membership base.

Why does this year's list matter for the race?

The Academy has made international broadening of its membership a structural priority, and each invitation cycle adds voting members from outside the United States. Bhardwaj and Lakhani's inclusion fits that pattern: the organization is deliberately recruiting members with deep résumés in national cinemas that historically sat outside the Hollywood core.

That shift matters most in categories where international entries compete. Best International Feature, the shorts, and the craft categories all depend on members actually watching a wide field of contenders. More voters drawn from Indian cinema raises the odds that Indian work clears the visibility threshold required to reach a nomination.

It also matters at the shortlisting stage, where smaller voting pools determine which international films advance. Members with direct knowledge of a producing region can move the needle on which titles survive that cut.

Who are the new members?

Bhardwaj's invitation recognizes a career that bridges music composition, screenwriting and direction across multiple award-winning films. He has long been one of the most decorated figures in contemporary Indian cinema.

Lakhani's invitation comes through the costume design branch, where her credits include large-scale Indian productions that have circulated on global streaming platforms. Costume designers hold their own branch vote and a seat at the final ballot table.

Both now sit within the same voting machinery that decides every category on Oscar night, from Best Picture downward.

What comes next?

Invitations become effective once the invitees accept, and new members typically participate in the next Oscar voting cycle. Their ballots will land in a membership now numbering well past 10,000, a figure the Academy has built up through successive years of aggressive expansion.

For awards watchers, the takeaway is procedural rather than sentimental: the electorate just changed, again, and the Indian share of it grew. Every future nomination round will be decided by a body that now includes Bhardwaj and Lakhani by name.