Certification delays remain a chronic headache for producers, cinema owners

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. NEW DELHI : The censorship trials of Tamil films Jana Nayagan and Parasakthi show that not only is the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) understaffed, but the revising committee, tasked with addressing filmmakers’ grievances, is also often unreliable.

While the committee is meant to provide a secondary review of disagreements, in practice, its operations are opaque and constrained by the same issues that plague the board to begin with, leaving filmmakers and theatre owners ultimately to bear the cost of certification delays. While Sivakarthikeyan-starrer Parasakthi released on 10 January after facing scrutiny from the CBFC over alleged factual inaccuracies and the producers appealing to the revising committee, Vijay’s Jana Nayagan remains stuck between court orders and the CBFC mandates.

“A lot of these issues arise because makers wait until the last minute when the release is only a few days away, and the CBFC and the revising committee are already dealing with a huge backlog," said film producer and distributor Yusuf Shaikh, also founder and chief executive of low-cost theatre chain Janta Cinema. Shaikh added that these bodies are genuinely understaffed, and delays often mean producers have to resort to additional fees to expedite the process, which many, especially independent filmmakers, cannot afford.

Censorship delays often disrupt theatrical schedules and cause significant inconvenience to cinema owners, as advance bookings for tentpole films typically begin nearly a week before release. Promotional losses for such films can run into ₹25-30 crore.