New Delhi : Soon after the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal (FCAT) cleared a movie on the Dera Sachha Sauda chief, Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Insan, the chairperson of the Film Censor Board, Leela Samson, sent in her resignation from the post alleging government interference.
The film, MSG-Messenger of God, had been rejected by the Censor Board on the grounds that it portrayed the Dera chief as having miraculous powers. The other reasons were that it promotes obscurantism and superstition.
However, the dera chief has enormous political clout, and the Film Appellate Tribunal, which usually takes weeks to have a relook at a film, cleared the movie within 24 hours of it being rejected by the examining committee and the revising committee of the Censor Board.
Though Samson’s resignation came close on the heels of the decision to clear the movie, she has also cited reasons such as “interference, coercion and corruption of panel members and officers of the organization who are appointed by the ministry” for her resignation. Her resignation was accompanied with the decision of another member Ira Bhaskar to quit.
Apart from this, a senior member of the board told this correspondent that they are planning en masse action and a group of members could quit in unison by Saturday. According to this member, the board is virtually dysfunctional for the last nine months and no meeting has been held over this period.
While resigning, Samson, an accomplished Bharatnatyam dancer, also referred to the challenges of “having to manage an organization, whose Board has not met for over nine months as the ministry had no funds to permit the meeting of members.”
However, the Union Minister of State for I&B Rajyavardhan Rathore countered this by asking Samson to show a “letter or an SMS’’ to prove that the government had been ignoring the CBFC’s requests and preventing the Board from meeting for the past nine months. But members have confirmed that no meeting has taken place in the last nine months.
Samson’s resignation, however, is god-sent for the government considering that her three-year term and that of many of the Board members had ended in May 2014. In July, the Ministry had informed the Board members that their term was being extended “till further notice”. Now, the government can reconstitute the board and pack it with its nominees that would protect the interests of the saffron brotherhood.
Recently, the Board had also come under pressure from members of the Sangh Parivar over the Amir Khan-starrer `PK’. At that point, Samson had gone on record stating that no scene from the film would be removed as it had already been released. This too had not gone down well with the establishment.
