MUMBAI MIRROR (August 1, 2020)

The Defence Ministry, in a letter to the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, has advised production houses to obtain a No Objection Certificate (NOC) from them before telecasting any film, documentary, web series on army theme in the public domain. The letter was sent by the Ministry of Defence on July 27.

The decision was taken after some web series were found to present an allegedly distorted image of the armed forces. “In some of the web series like Code M on Zee5 and XXX Uncensored (Season 2) on ALT Balaji, the scenes related to the army are far from reality and present a distorted image of the Armed Forces,” said a senior government official.

Bollywood films based on the military go through a mandatory clearance process. However, with increased OTT platforms, the army feels it needs to moderate any possible alleged negative depiction of the uniform.