Mumbai: Film and Television Producers Guild (FTPG) has sought the Centre's intervention to discourage frivolous litigation challenging the content of films that have been certified for exhibition by the CBFC. In a letter to the new Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tiwari on November 9, Guild president Mukesh Bhatt said the judicial process has been ill-treated by political parties and fake interest groups to achieve self advertisement.
"Even kickstarting a procedure by initiating litigation and summoning the CBFC, producers, directors, actors, distributors of the films is sufficient to give
mammoth publicity to the litigant on one hand and cause undue harassment to those associated with the film on the other hand," Bhatt wrote.
The filmmaker noted that a film scheduled for release is therefore perceived as a potential wage for undue gains in terms of money, fame, publicity and it has become a preferred tendency to approach courts at the last minute before the
scheduled release to suit such malafide purpose.
Bhatt described the growing instances of frivolous litigations as an abuse of the legal system, which is meant for protection of individual rights and freedom.
Moreover, any attempt to trigger the process of pre-censorship by addressing frivolous letters to the CBFC, as has been done in several instances, results in CBFC being over-cautious, conservative and using a magnifying glass to certify films for public exhibition, Bhatt said.
The freedom of speech and expression of a filmmaker is thus jeopardised when the CBFC acts in an unstructured and conventional manner, Bhatt said.
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