Is Censor Board scared of Sena?

Apprehensive of Saffron party's possible ire, this scene showing a Bal Thackeray poster is snipped from Anurag Kashyap's latest film

Is Censor Board scared of Sena?

Apprehensive of Saffron party's possible ire, this scene showing a Bal Thackeray poster is snipped from Anurag Kashyap's latest film

Shiv Sena supporters who were beginning to believe that the tiger was losing his roar now have reason to take heart.
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For, it seems, even an innocuous poster of Bal Thackeray in a film is enough to make Censor Board officials quake in their boots.

This image of a Bal Thackeray poster at a dahi handi event was the cause of all the drama

Anurag Kashyap, the producer of the upcoming Rajeev Khandelwal-Kalki Koechlen starrer Shaitan, was asked to edit out a scene containing a poster of the Sena supremo that was shot as part of a chase sequence.

The reason given by the Censor Board was that they did not want the political party to create law and order problems upon the film's release.

Members of the film's unit said that since the director, Bejoy Nambiar, wanted Gokul Ashtami as the backdrop for the sequence, they had taken permission from the Shiv Sena's local shakha to shoot one of their dahi handi celebrations in Thane.

Being a Sena-promoted event, posters of Uddhav and Bal Thackeray were put up in various places and one of them found its way in the final edit that was shown to the Censor Board.

But the board requested the producers to chop off the scene where the senior Thackeray's posters were seen prominently. Confirming this, Kashyap said, "Yes, we had to take one scene off the film.
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It is a crowd scene and one of the scenes had a solo shot of Balasaheb Thackeray.

We quietly took it off because we didn't want to go into the trouble of showing the film to the Shiv Sena before its release, take a no-objection certificate from them or even argue with them.'

Director Bejoy Nambiar said the Censor Board had asked for the scene to be taken off as it was concerned about the aftermath.

"I had taken permission from the local Shiv Sena shakha. I wanted to shoot a Gokul Ashtami scene and Shiv Sena organises really big dahi handi events.

Bal Thackeray and Anurag Kashyap

We chose to shoot at one such event in Thane. It is a chase sequence and one of the scenes had Balasaheb Thackeray's posters.

The Censors asked us to take it off, saying it might create trouble after the release. I was not showing him in a bad light, but we didn't want to run the risk of offending anyone.

Censor Board's take
A source in the Censor Board confirmed that the board is extra careful about these things because political parties are 'waiting to create law and order problems with any and every issue'.

"It is not about the Shiv Sena in particular. We all know that political parties are looking for issues to create law and order problems.

We want to protect the filmmakers and the general audience from that hassle after the film's release. In Shaitan, some meaningful chase action happens around Balasaheb Thackeray's poster.

We asked them to remove it because we were sure it would lead to some issue or the other later," he said.

"Earlier, in Love Ka The End, there was a shot of a road and a poster of a political figure. We asked for that to be deleted too. We are just trying to create a peaceful situation here," he added.