1st Internal Assessment

Media & Entertainment Law

Movie Review: Udta Punjab

Submitted by:
Arindam Arav Prakash
18010126013
6th Semester , Division : A
2018-23
 Introduction
The news and media have been dominated by news of drug use in punjab in the past .
The movie has shown the reality and ugly truth on the bigger screen big enough to
gain people’s attention. Many political and local groups in Punjab have gone to speak
against the movie since it would enumerate numerous topic and debate on the topic.
The result was the CFBC demanded a cut of 94 scenes in the movie and had given an
“A” certificate. The board had considered the film unfit for public review as a result
of its coarse speech and scenes of violence and drug-taking. The CBFC additionally
contended that setting the film in the northern territory of Punjab would harm the
district's standing and discourage the travel industry and venture.

Plot Summary
Udta Punjab opens with a remarkable picture of flight – a drug dealer from Pakistan
flings across a crore-worth of heroin across the border, extending his muscles and
accepting the posture of a disk thrower. In this one short scene, director Abhishek
Chaubey sets up his reason – drugs are exiting the sky in the northern state,
convincing its kin to act in unusual and hurtful manners.
Alia Bhatt, a bihari migrant, takes the heroin and chooses to sell it herself. Then,
drug-addled star rapper Tommy Singh (Shahid Kapoor) has made a tune that rhymes
"coke" with "cock", and he and his company, including his uncle (Satish Kaushik),
are excessively satisfied with themselves to predict the inescapable results. Likewise
inescapable is the destiny of Sartaj Singh (Diljit Dosanjh). An associate police officer
who benefits from pay-offs from waving on trucks loaded with heroin, Sartaj is
shaken out of his smugness just when his more youthful sibling fosters a dependence
and terrains up at a facility run by the virtuous Preet (Kareena Kapoor Khan).

These interlaced strands clarify the what, where, who and how of the drug exchange
of Punjab without messing with the when and the why. The social and financial
foundations of Punjab's drug issue stay covered. The screenplay by Chaubey and
Sudip Sharma watches out for the store network and spotlights on uncovering the
political supervisors who maintain the business. The suggestions to the complicity of
the state's dominant tribe, the Badals, are unmissable.
 Description

Udta Punjab, has acquired a lot of reputation for its spat with the Central Board of
Film Certification . The film was built around the shenanigans related to drug abuse in
Northern Punjab area. There are 4 main interlinked characters around whom the story
unfolds. The movie links the drug trade, abuse , the power men dealing with the trade
and the cops and shows the ugly truth of Punjab . The movie also showcases violence
around the area and the misery of the migrant workers.
Few regional punjabi groups have opposed to the release of the movie as they claim
that all the news related to the movie is fake and this would bring a bad name to the
region.
The producers of the movie have approached the Bomabay High Court regarding
release of their film1 . Bombay High Court directed the Censor Board to hand over the
film's certificate to the producers, the industry is rejoicing and so are cinema lovers.
The team went through quite a struggle to acquire the clearance certificate which has
become one of the landmark cases for films. Meanwhile the ruling party also
questioned the directors and producers relation to opposition parties and it was
contended that the movie was being released to bring a bad name to Punjab.

Analysis
In the aftermath of the controversy, it has become tempting to cast the censor board
chairperson in the role of the comedy villain, the sinister yet dull-witted censor taking
up his blunt cudgels against art and expression2. Such a description is not entirely
inaccurate. However, framing the issue in terms of the actions of one individual — no
matter how arbitrary or erratic — risks confusing the symptom for the disease, and
blinding us to the real problem: today, a Nihalani is made possible because of the
existing legal framework, and nearly half-a-century of judicial discourse around it.

1
Phantom Films Pvt. Ltd. & ors. vs The Central Board Of Certification of films,2016 BOM 3862
2
NANDI, P.S., 2018. SURVEILLANCE, SEDITION, AND CENSORSHIP: CONTROL AND THE
PROSCRIPTION OF PERFORMATIVE SPACES IN INDIA FROM THE COLONIAL ERA TO
THE POSTCOLONIAL ERA. The Indigenous Voice of Poetoma
However, it didn't need to be like this. 46 years prior, the producer K.A. Abbas3
challenged the constitutionality of the pre-control system set up by the Cinematograph
Act4, just as the Guidelines outlined under it. Abbas' contention was that pre-oversight
was too draconian to ever be a "sensible limitation" upon free discourse under Article
19(2). This was particularly so on the grounds that other media of correspondence,
like print, were not exposed to pre-restriction. Regardless, he contended, in any event,
the Guidelines were totally ambiguous and discretionary. Strangely, Chief Justice
Hidayatullah’s reasoning in K.A. Abbas was strongly reminiscent of the “argument
from colonial difference”5, used by the British to deny Indians civic freedoms and the
right to self-governance for the longest time. The British had routinely conjured the
passionate, mental and political adolescence of Indians to legitimize both their
standard, and the need of forcing a severe restriction system upon the press and
human expressions. Autonomy had come, and another Constitution, yet similar
Indians who were currently viewed as politically develop enough to administer
themselves and pick their own leaders, could in any case not be trusted by the
Supreme Court to watch films without the earlier endorsement of the public authority.
It isn't clear in what setting and for what reason the High Court mentioned this
observable fact. What ought to be clear, nonetheless, is that ample opportunity has
already past that this talk of "development" and "adolescence" (regardless of whether
of multiplex crowds or something else) was casted off from our protected talk. Our
Constitution, the zenith of a decades in length battle for political autonomy and
municipal opportunity, is premised upon the conviction — and the confidence — that
residents are independent people, who settle on their own decisions and assume
liability for them — regardless of whether it is in the political field while practicing
their entitlement to choose their representatives, or in the social field, in choosing
which divine beings to love, whom to connect with, and what to see, talk, or here. The
Cinematograph Act, its Guidelines, and the blue pencil board, by making the public
authority the mediator of what movies are fit or unsuitable for residents to see, with
the understanding that "some unacceptable" sorts of movies may lead them to frame

3
K. A Abbas v. Union of India , 1971 AIR 481
4
Sarkar, S., 2009. Right to Free Speech in a Censored Democracy. U. Denv. Sports & Ent.
LJ, 7, p.62.
5
Vashist, L., 2014. Law and the Obscene Image: Reading Aveek Sarkar v. State of West
Bengal. J. Indian L. & Soc'y, 5, p.248.
some unacceptable sorts of perspectives or make some unacceptable sorts of moves,
are essentially at chances with our established vision6.

Conclusion and Suggestions

It is in such a manner that the current system of film certification in India fails
staggeringly. In the event that the CBFC is to force a particular interpretation of a film
on to the remainder of people in general, how much it can decently and basically
survey films and reflect popular assessment is pivotal. Be that as it may, the
Cinematograph Act doesn't contain capabilities for CBFC individuals and the whole
oversight measure is subverted by the inordinate control the focal government has
over the CBFC—an issue tended to head on by the Khosla Committee. The
Committee's report obtusely brought up that the present board was not autonomous
from administrative control and the board's choice could be saved by a request for the
focal government, making the CBFC powerless to the ideas of legislative issues.

It is crystal clear that the engineering of film guideline in India is in critical need of
change. Eliminating affirmation out and out isn't a choice as they do have utility; an
administration empowered declaration awards security and lawful assurance. Be that
as it may, numerous different changes are required. Above all else, the CBFC ought to
be withdrawn from extreme control from the public authority and its organization
ought to turn out to be all the more rigidly directed. The suggestion made by the
Shyam Benegal Committee that the CBFC ought to be banished from mentioning cuts
and ought to just characterize which age gatherings can watch films is additionally
critical.

However, these changes won't address the issue of subjectivity in the rules or the
affirmation interaction, an assignment which is near incomprehensible. In that
capacity, the ideal arrangement is permit free associations to ensure films and a maker
unsatisfied with a declaration given by one association could generally approach
another. Opening up the accreditation interaction to numerous administrators permits
emotional interpretations contrasting from each other to vie for authenticity in the
6
Mukherjee, A., 2005. Audio-visual policies and international trade: the case of India. Cultural
Diversity and International Economic Integration: The Global Governance of the Audio-Visual
Sector, pp.218-58.
public space, consequently opening up open talk. Over the long haul, certifiers would
presumably get various notorieties (with makers and the public the same) in regards to
the sort of testaments they award. The impacts of these notorieties would almost
certainly play a factor in the techniques of film makers similarly as a PG-13 rating in
the USA influences the size of the conceivable crowd for activity films.

It would, obviously, be important to keep up some degree of unofficial law over the
certifiers. The CBFC would be entrusted with managing them by giving licenses and
rules. This would repurpose the CBFC as a defender of free discourse and key rights
entrusted with generally policing capacities that solitary strides in where vital. A
smoothed out system for engaging the testaments gave just as to hearing protests
against the certifiers would be fundamental parts in this new structure. While to some
degree progressive, this new system would be an improvement since it permits the
commercial center of thoughts to define the boundaries of what sort of substance is
good for crowds with the public authority actually being equipped for stepping in to
control salacious sensibilities.