Film censorship clarifications to MP raise further questions

After initially saying in April that the government had no data on the censor’s cuts applied to films before they were released, the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting sent a clarification to Rajya Sabha MP John Brittas that raised further questions.

In April, Dr. Brittas had asked the I&B Ministry for data on how many cuts were applied to films by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) in the last five years. “Data for the number of cuts and changes suggested during the film examination are not separately maintained,” the Ministry said. 

However, the cut lists for all films certified from 2018 onwards are not only maintained by the CBFC, they are maintained in a digitised format that is indirectly accessible on a website run by the censor board. In February, The Hindu reported on how some of these cut lists showed an increasing politicisation of film censorship, with mentions of the Prime Minister and other politicians being removed from several films. 

‘No separate records’

After Dr. Brittas sent a representation on the irregularities in the Ministry’s initial response, I&B Minister Anurag Thakur sent him a letter claiming that “the CBFC has informed that it does not maintain records or compilation of film-wise cuts or modifications,” a claim that runs counter to the information available on the CBFC’s own e-Cinepramaan portal. Mr. Thakur acknowledged this later in the response, saying that “details of each certified film is available on the certificate itself, and can be viewed through [scanning] the QR code” therein.

Statistical information provided to Dr. Brittas revealed that in 2021–22, the CBFC demanded cuts from 1,522 films, with the number of films in Telugu and Tamil requiring cuts being the highest. 276 films in Telugu were required to be cut, whereas 266 films in Tamil needed them. These statistics raise more questions, though, as they appear to be presented in a fiscal year reporting period, whereas annual CBFC statistics are in a calendar year format. 

Mr. Thakur defended the government’s initial response, claiming that while this information was available with the CBFC, “data for the number of cuts and changes” was “not maintained separately”. In effect, the CBFC had not tallied the number of cuts it maintained in a digital format in response to a Parliamentary question. 

The data the Ministry ended up providing may be hard to parse for other reasons. Since cuts can range from minor ones — from muting a single word to chopping large parts of scenes for violence — it may not be possible to draw any useful inferences on censorship trends. 

Denial via RTI

Moreover, Mr. Thakur said that “information was provided by [regional CBFC offices] to … applicants under the Right to Information Act, 2005 when asked for details of cuts/modifications granted in respect to specific films.” On the contrary, the CBFC has refused access to these cut lists via the RTI route.

In RTI responses in 2022 and 2023 from the Mumbai office of the CBFC, which processes the bulk of films submitted for certification, Public Information Officers have, at least twice, declined to provide cut lists to films. In one such reponse, the officer argued that “[cut lists] are the private intellectual property of the filmmaker and therefore cannot be provided” in response to an RTI application. The Hindu later obtained the cut lists from the e-Cinepramaan website.