The Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) found itself in the midst of controversy again when the authorised certification agent, Pravin Mohare filed a police complaint against the chairman Pahlaj Nihalani in Malabar Hill Police Station, on May 20. He alleged that Nihalani raised his hand on him twice and used abusive language. While the Censor Board chief claims he has informed the Central Board of Investigation (CBI) about Pravin running a racket of issuing duplicate censor certificates to film producers, the agent, responsible for the arrest of Censor Board ex-CEO Rakesh Kumar in a bribery case, last year, is least perturbed. “It's a known fact that I'd issued 20 to 25 fake certificates for couple of feature films, ad films, promos and trailers when their certifications were getting delayed, to expose the loopholes in the system, two months back. Everybody in CBFC and the producers knows about it. Why didn't the chairman take action against me earlier? I've given interviews to news channels on this and have been continuing Pahlaj with my work in the CBFC all this Nihalan while,“ he says, adding, “I'd gone to apply for the censor certificate for dubbed films but the chairman told me that such movies cannot be given a certificate if their dubbing has been done three years after the original release. This rule was applicable in 1999, but not anymore. Since then CBFC has certified about 20,000 dubbed films till April this year. He's digging out old rules which were not in force for a long time.“

However, Nihalani differs saying, “The Ministry has implemented the rule again. I'm following all the CBFC rules to the T. I had him thrown out as he had barged into my cabin without permission and was shouting on top of his voice.“

It's also alleged that the chairman broke his own set of rules when he allowed certain cuss words in a recent big release after giving it a UA certificate. “The film had cuss words like 'bh*dwa', 'dalal', violence against women and impolite references towards them, which Nihalani had himself banned, but instead he's deleting words like 'saala' from other films,“ said a CBFC source. Pravin corroborates, saying, “Recently, 'saala' was dubbed as 'jaala' for an `A' certified film.“ He also reveals that the film's duplicate censor certificate was out in the market 15 days before its release. “Because of the duplicate certificate, the film's DVDs were available in the market. When I told the chairman, he wasn't even interested in listening. He should ideally inform the people concerned.“

Meanwhile, Pravin's work in CBFC has stopped. He says, “The Censor Board blocked my ID within a day after I lodged the police complaint. The chairman has even told filmmakers that if they route their application for certification through me, he won't accept it.“