A Parliamentary Panel pulled up the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government for dragging its feet on overhauling the archaic film certification and censorship mechanism, bringing only incremental changes to the Cinematograph Act that was first introduced in 1952.
The Standing Committee on Information and Technology, headed by Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, which will table its report on the Cinematograph (Amendment) Bill, 2019 on Monday in Parliament has said that the government was being “unambitious”.
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The Cinematograph Amendment Bill, 2019 is a belated measure by the government to tackle the issue of piracy. It seeks to introduce two sections to the Cinematograph Act, 1952 — one, prohibiting illegal recording in cinema halls to make a “pirate copy” of the film, and second, prescribing punishment of up to three years or a fine of up to ₹10 lakh towards the said offence. The Bill was introduced in Rajya Sabha in February last year and referred to the Standing Committee.
Limited scope
The Committee, according to sources, has found the scope of the Cinematograph (Amendment) Bill 2019 very limited. “Piracy can happen at various levels. The Bill only tackles illegal recording at cinema halls. Also, the punishment prescribed in the Bill is too little when compared with the losses that a pirated film can lead to,” one of the members said on condition of anonymity.
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The Committee has suggested that with the average budgets of films going up, some of them even up to ₹200-₹300 crore per production, the fine creating a pirated version of it should be a percentage of the total budget of the film instead of the relatively paltry ₹10 lakh prescribed in the Bill.
Efforts at reworking
The Committee has noted the two recent efforts at reworking the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), which in common parlance is referred to as the Censor Board. In 2013, the Information and Broadcasting Ministry under the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government had instituted a committee under Justice Mukul Mudgal. The report was forgotten by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, which in 2016 formed a committee under the leadership of filmmaker Shyam Benegal to look at the same issue.
Mr. Benegal in turn recommended that the CBFC should only be a film certification body whose scope should be restricted to categorising the suitability of the film to audience groups on the basis of age and maturity.
Nearly four years on, the Committee said, that the government has done little to implement either of these two reports and continues to follow archaic processes with only superficial improvements.
