Finally a call to the end of cuts Era has been sent. Prasoon Joshi to succeed Pahlaj Nihlani as the new CBFC chief.
Pahlaj Nihlani, also known as the cut-king of India, has been sacked as the CBFC chief and the famous Bollywood Lyricist, Prasoon Joshi.
Prasoon Joshi is an lyricist, screenwriter, poet and marketer. He has received the Filmfare Best Lyricist Award three times, in 2007 and 2008 and again in 2014 for the Hindi movie Bhaag Milkha Bhaag. He has also received the National Film Award for Best Lyrics twice, for his work in Taare Zameen Par (2007), and Chittagong (2013).
Pahlaj Nihlani’s two year tenure as CBFC chief was marred by controversy. As a chief of CBFC, he introduced a new trend in the film industry and that was “DEMODERNISATION”. His recent controversy was related to the Bollywood film “JAB HARRY MET SEJAL” in which he refused to censor the film because of the word INTERCOURSE in the movie. This controversy took place in twitter wars as a poll. He challenged if the public passes the word in the polls, he will accept the word and will never censor such thing in future.
His relation with controversies never ended during his Era of Cuts. Since his appointment as the Central Board of Film Certification in January 2015, Nihlani made headlines for a number of controversial moves and statements. He was always targeted for his age-old reasons for the cuts in movies. He was nicknamed as Aloknath Junior because of his “Sanskarism” and unusual cuts in the movies. Some of his controversies in his timeline are:
- Nihlani, as a known film producer, came up with an election campaign “HAR HAR MODI” for BJP’s Prime Ministerial Candidate, Narendra Modi.
- After the resignation of Leela Samson as a CBFC chief in 2015, Nihlani was appointed as a new CBFC chief then.
- In his first Interview as a CBFC chief, he said, “I am a proud BJP man and Narendra Modi is his action man.”
- In an another interview, he suggested a list of words which were restricted from being used in films without a solid context stating that he will not tolerate such cuss words anymore in films. Many film makers called it as an attack on their freedom of expression.
- His list of words contained “Bombay” as a cuss word.
- Censor board trimmed down a kissing scene in a James Bond Franchise, Spectre, and said it was needed to keep up with the Indian ‘Sanskars’.
- He was in headlines after he announced to make a film on the students of the Films and Television Institute of India, Pune, which will bring out their anti-national activities, sparking a row on social media.
His account is full of such incidents and controversies. Today, the internet is celebrating his sudden exit as a chief of CBFC.
(All Image source is Google)