Film board faces charges of ‘Censorship raj’, no meeting in 6 years alongside term lapse: report

New Delhi: The Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), a statutory body under the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, last met six years ago on August 31, 2019 where it should have met once every quarter, The Indian Express reported.

Opening up a plethora of complaints ‘brewing within the fraternity — and inside the CBFC, too’, it is reported citing a member that ‘There is no (board) meeting, no annual report, no work for most of us, no appellate authority (for filmmakers)… CBFC is running at its chairman’s pleasure’.

The member pointing to deepening stagnancy said that tenures of members are three years but ‘no one has been officially reappointed since 2017’ adding that even the identity card was not replaced after its validity expired.

As per the rules the board has to publish and submit an annual report to the I&B Ministry; however the last annual report on the CBFC website was in 2016-17.

Since the board was last reconstituted on August 1, 2017 ‘for a period of three years or until further orders, whichever is earlier’, its existence after the mandated period ended in 2020 raises question about the board’s legal status, according to the report.

A member appointed in 2015 wondered ‘We don’t know if we are still members of the board or if the board itself is functioning legally.’

Lyricist Prasoon Joshi was appointed as chairperson of the 12-member board on August 11, 2017 with others onboard: Gautami Tadimalla; author Narendra Kohli, film director Naresh Chander Lal; musician Neil Herbert Nongkynrih, film director Vivek Agnihotri, theatre director Waman Kendre; actor Vidya Balan; filmmaker T S Nagabharana; editor Ramesh Patange; actor Vani Tripati Tikoo; actor and director Jeevitha Rajasekhar; and playwright Mihir Bhuta.

Of them author Narendra Kohli and musician Neil Herbert Nongkynrih died respectively in 2021 and 2022.

According to the report, many film professional accused of CBFC chairperson involving only ‘a select few members’ in running the board in recent years with Kendre, Nagabharana and Patange allegedly ‘heading most of the board’s Revising Committees (RC)’.

This is alongside complaints of censorship cuts meted out to movies including the globally acclaimed Homebound.

The movie which listed American filmmaker Martin Scorsese as an executive producer eventually came out rattling the movie’s makers, according to the report.

The movie Punjab ’95 starring global star Diljit Dosanjh was asked to undergo over 100 cuts, which the movie’s director opposed.