HC also asked as to why they haven’t banned the film yet if it is glorifying drugs. However, the Bombay High Court on Friday pulled up the censor board on “censoring” films instead of “certifying” them.
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Hours after Censor Board Chief Pahlaj Nihalani alleged Udta Punjab director Anurag Kashyap of taking money from Aam Aadmi Party, for creating controversy over the film, the Bollywood big wigs including Amitabh Bachan chose to come out in support of Kashyap and slammed Nihlani for his accusation. Let (the) people decide whether a movie is good or bad… “No film runs because of the use of cuss words”. According to the Board members, this movie is having many scenes like youth injecting drugs and some other scenes. The content of the movie matters. “Many movies are failing in multiplexes because the audiences are bored with this overdose”, the court observed.
“You (CBFC) have to give people the choice to view what they want”. In the house, a person uses the remote to switch on or off the television.
The petition also reads: “He has taken arbitrary decisions, sometimes without even watching movies”. The modern generation won’t be impressed by all this. “I don’t think the pradhan sevak needs any sycophants”, he said.
When the board went on to justify all the 13 cuts saying the film was meant for public exhibition, the court said the CBFC should only certify a film and not censor it.
“Do you say that you did not understand the words and yet suggested the cut?” asked the bench when the lawyer on behalf of CBFC told the court that the movie was in Hindi and hence a Hindi expert was present during the screening.
The CBFC also demanded that a scene where a character is scratching a body part be deleted. This need not be shown in any form.
The short satirical video featuring Richa Chadda, Namrata Rao, and Kartik Krishnan through the use of strong language and profane words, lashes out against the board. Is it really necessary for a creative person to rely on expletives. “Now, whenever you have a problem at the level of the first body, people go to the next slab and nearly in 99% of the cases, with or without some changes, it gets cleared by the next body”, he said.
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The petitioner’s counsel Ravi Kadam said they were willing to delete that particular scene from the movie.
