Censor Board chief Pahlaj Nihalani may be sacked over Modi video, says report

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The Union Information & Broadcasting (I&B) Ministry may sack Censor Board chief Pahlaj Nihalani for the embarrassment his video praising Prime Minister Narendra Modi has caused the government, Mid-Day newspaper reported on Thursday.

The report quotes an anonymous senior I&B ministry official as saying: “It is a matter of time before an official announcement will be made, but the decision to replace him (Nihalani) has already been taken."  I&B Minister Arun Jaitley and his deputy Rajyavardhan Rathore are learnt to have conveyed their displeasure to Nihalani, the Mid-Day report said.

Earlier, NewsX had tweeted on Wednesday that the government was likely to replace the CBFC chairman.

Nihalani, chairman of the Central Board for Film Certification (CBFC), has been embroiled in controversy since his appointment as the chief of the 23-member board in January this year. For one, he has drawn flak for his prudish views and making his political leaning clear by calling PM Modi his “action hero”. His candidature as the CBFC chief was said to have been pushed by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which also supported the controversial FTII chairman Gajendra Chauhan.

Nihalani’s eulogy of Modi in a seven-minute video, Mera Desh Hai Mahan , had drawn a lot of flak for its unabashed hero worshipping. He had ordered theatres across India screening Salman Khan-starrer Prem Ratan Dhan Payo to play the Modi
film during intermission.

With shoddy production quality and passing off the Dubai Expressway and the Moscow International Business Centre as scenes from emerging India, the film actually ended up embarrassing the government and causing much unease. Nihalani later clarified the images were necessary to convey Modi’s vision of a new India.

He hoped to give Modi a moniker akin to Jawaharlal Nehru’s ‘Nehru chacha’ when he included in his film an image of Modi in padmasana, Photoshopped against a snow-capped peak, spotted by a group of kids who shout: “Modi kaka!”

Nihalani has also come under fire for the recent cuts to James Bond film Spectre. The move, which cut a kissing scene by almost 50 per cent spawned the Sanskaari James Bond that quickly went viral. Things recently got worse when he admitted during a television debate that he stood by his decision despite not having watched a single minute of the film.