The Bombay High Court is learnt to have rejected almost all apprehensions expressed by the Central Board of Film Certification during the hearing of movie Udta Punjab case. According to Huffpost India, Justice Dharamadhikari has set aside 12 cuts demanded by the Censor Board but agreed that a scene where Shahid Kapoor is seen urinating into a crowd should be removed.
Here’s a compilation of strong statements observed by the court while rapping the Censor Board:
The word censor is not anywhere in the act. Your power is to certify films for public exhibition.
Are you saying you ordered cuts without understanding the language? (Reaction on the CBFC counsel’s argument that the film has a lot of Punjabi in contrast to the official language of the film i.e. Hindi)
If Goa can be shown as a place of drug abuse in that film (Go Goa Gone), what is wrong if Punjab is shown in Udta Punjab?
There was a film on Moga (a district in Punjab) being a town full of cancer patients. It was not to degrade the town, but to talk about the seriousness of the issue,
People born in the 80s are ‘direct,’ ‘open’ and ‘mature.’
If the film is only filled with expletives then the audience won’t watch the film. Why are you giving the film so much publicity?
The film industry is not made of glass that you need to ‘handle with care.’ If you ask for so many cuts, then what is the point? The audience knows. Has CBFC discharged its functions from 1952 onwards with utmost care? We are fed up of all this.
The public is the biggest censor. We want creative people to survive and the industry to survive. You have to show the reality.
Don’t Miss: Why Udta Punjab must release without a single cut
These statements have been carried by various news portals such as Dailypioneer, Scroll & Huffpost India.
