I&B Minister Arun Jaitley and MoS, I&B Rajyavardhan Rathore are believed to have jointly conveyed their displeasure to CBFC chief Pahlaj Nihalani
Shantanu Guha Ray (MID-DAY; November 26, 2015)

The Information and Broadcasting Ministry has decided to sack the Central Board for Film Certification (CBFC) chairperson Pahlaj Nihalani for the severe embarrassment the film has caused the government. “It is a matter of time before an official announcement will be made but the decision to replace him has already been taken,” a senior ministry official said on condition of anonymity.

Nihalani has courted controversy since his appointment as head of the 23-member board in January this year, drawing flak for his prudish views and making his political leaning clear by calling PM Narendra Modi his “action hero”. His candidature was pushed by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which had also supported controversial FTII chairman Gajendra Chauhan.

Information and Broadcasting Minister Arun Jaitley and Rajyavardhan Rathore, Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting, are believed to have jointly conveyed their displeasure to Nihalani, it is reliably learnt. It could not be confirmed whether the filmmaker was called to Delhi or the warning was sounded over the phone.

Social media found its game in Nihalani following his decision to cut Daniel Craig’s kisses with co-stars Léa Seydoux and Monica Bellucci in the latest James Bond release, Spectre, down to 50 per cent. Things got worse when he admitted on a television debate that he stood by his decision but had not watched a single minute of the film. But it was another film that got the government’s goat.

A seven-minute film titled, Mera Desh Hai Mahan made public his hero worship of Modi, when Nihalani, overstepping the Ministry, ordered theatres across India screening Salman Khan starrer Prem Ratan Dhan Payo to play it during intermission. With shoddy production quality and passing off the Dubai Expressway and the Moscow International Business Centre as scenes from emerging India, the film is now less a eulogy and more a cause for unease. Nihalani later clarified that the images were necessary to convey Modi’s vision of a new India.  He hoped to give Modi a moniker akin to Jawaharlal Nehru’s ‘Nehru Chacha’ when he included in his film an image of Modi in the padmasana Photoshopped against a snow-capped peak, spotted by a group of kids who shout, “Modi Kaka!” That interview to the TV channel, claim Ministry sources, was the final trigger. It was here that Nihalani confessed that he hasn’t watched a single scene of Spectre but was happy to see the kissing scenes cut. That he called himself an “old” and “sanskari Chairman of CBFC” made matters worse. The film was taken off theatres in two days because it had been made and aired without the Ministry’s approval.



The official said Nihalani, in a short span, had become “one of the biggest jokes on social media because he repeatedly said he does not watch films”. It’s learnt that two members of the CBFC board had called up the ministers, describing Nihalani as the “Greg Chappell of Indian cinema”, demanding his removal.

Nihalani has been at loggerheads with some of his colleagues, including Ashoke Pandit and Vani Tripathi Tikoo. “Pahlaj Nihalani has always functioned on his own accord and I don’t subscribe to his curtailing of creative rights,” Pandit tweeted, disassociating himself from the Spectre riw. He argued that a director once associated with smutty cinema shouldn’t be “giving sermons to filmmakers”. Interestingly, Rathore, during a visit to Mumbai’s CBFC office this March, deliberately kept Nihalani out of a meeting he called with the directors.

It’s here that some of them are said to have openly come out against Nihalani; some even calling him “a dictator”. Rathore has consistently stressed that the Board should concern itself with certifying films on the basis of which the age-groups of viewers that watch them can be determined.

A source at the Censor Board said they had heard news of the ouster but didn’t know if it was true. “He went on a news show on Tuesday night to discuss why the kissing scenes in Spectre were reduced to half their duration, after which his phone has been switched off.”

When mid-day called Nihalani, we met with the same response. He didn’t respond to text messages either.