Censor Board chief Pahlaj Nihalani faces a trust motion on June 9

NEW DELHI: A meeting of the Central Board of Film Certification (often referred to as the Censor Board) on June 9, to be presided over by Minister of State for Information & Broadcasting Rajyavardhan Rathore, could see a no-confidence motion against the board’s controversial chief Pahlaj Nihalani and even his eventual exit.

Ten of the 12 board members were of the opinion that it was difficult to work with Nihalani and that they would seek a vote, according to half-a-dozen members ET spoke for this story.

“We are preparing for a good fight. All of us want the menace to end. Nihalani cannot take the board members and the film industry for granted. We have become the laughing stock everywhere,” one of the members told ET requesting anonymity. Nihalani told ET that there were members driving their own agendas at the board.

‘Kundan Shah Film Faced 70 cuts’

“I am only doing my duty. I haven’t even met the board members outside of the two board meetings we have had. My programmers get in touch with them for movie reviews, not me. I don’t understand why they have problems with me,” Nihalanisaid.

On May 30, one of the members, Chandraprakash Dwivedi, wrote an email to other members asking that the June 9 meeting should be held ‘in camera’. Dwivedi has also asked that the meeting be presented with certificates of films cleared in the last one year and details of who introduced what cuts and the number of revisions attended and presided by Nihalani.

“Nihalani watches every movie, even documentaries, because he wants the certificate on screen to bear his name. This is completely ridiculous. No other member has any work to do here,” said another board member, adding, “A filmmaker like Kundan Shah, who has made Nukkad and Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron, is being given 70 cuts in his film by Nihalani. We cannot do this to our living legends.”

Members say there could either be a request for an open discussion of issues leading to a vote for or against Nihalani on June 9. However, the official agenda for the meeting is yet to be released. On Friday, Nandini Sardesai, a senior member of the board, wrote to I&B minister Arun Jaitley calling the chairperson a megalomaniac.

The matter came up after filmmaker Pritish Nandy wrote an email to Sardesai explaining the laborious process involved in looking for the right legal representation as the CBFC served a two week back-dated letter after rejecting his film Mastizaade for certification for the second time.

In his email, Nandy said that the grounds of rejection were too specious to list. Sardesai had written a letter earlier to the ministry alleging that Nihalani watched and cleared all the “big-banner” Bollywood films himself, denying the other members any role in the certification process. A few days ago, board member Mihir Bhuta said that Nihalini had made the censor board “redundant”, while another member Ashoke Pandit had described him as a “tyrant”.