The Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) made a significant change in a portal to publish the ‘cut lists’ of films this month, making it difficult to regularly review the censorship applied to films. The e-Cinepraman portal, which is used by the studio to present paperwork for films, and pay fees for getting their films certified and age-rated, hosting cut lists since 2017 that can review the public. These cut lists are not searchable on the main website of the censor board.
The QR code on the CBFC certificates indicates the film’s respective e-signepraman page, verifying that the certificate is valid, and the censor provides a list of deductions applicable by the board. Since the web addresses of these pages were finished with an 18-a number, which can be slightly changed to see the new details of the certificate regularly in the order released, it is possible that the cuts sought by the sensor have almost total visibility.
For example, Hindu Informed on the cut cut Perumal Reconstruction Dhadak 2 Last month, with the help of a code snipet, which rectified the latest films certified by CBFC. Opponent ethnic references and political dialogues in the film were muted. The CBFC has worked fast to make political and religious content and symbolism from films.
However, in the end of May, the portal went into “maintenance”, and as this month, CBFC has replaced the 18-conductive identifier with a token, a string of alphanumeric characters that cannot be meaningfully modified to obtain another certificate. This change appears to be rebel, essentially breaks the existing QR code on certificates issued in the last eight years.
CBFC certificates are required to dramatically display any film, and after a series of court decisions, television channels also require a one for films (although the TV series does not go through government sensors). Censor Board Chairman, Filmmaker and Advertising Executive Prasoon Joshi, did not respond to a query Hindu On the changes made on the site, nor were the administrative heads of the autonomous body.
Director Anurag Kashyap told Hindu In addition to recent developments in the sensor board, the site was making it difficult to reach cut lists, “also scary”. “It’s more [focused on] In comparison to giving information, taking information from the person tracking it, who should be public in any way, ”said Mr. Kashyap.
Bangalore -based developer and researcher Aman Bhargava has led a team of volunteers from December 2024 to recover these sensorship records and enrich a clever, interactive website with details of more than 100,000 personal cuts made in about 20,000 films in the last seven years. Mr. Bhargava shared a working copy of the website, which he was planning to launch publicly in the middle of this month. But then in May, the site went into maintenance, which was working on the major changes leaving Mr. Bhargava, and others, unable to retrieve this cut data.
“We worked on the cleaning of the cut details”, “Matudata extract, and allowed others to run a pipeline on their own” in data collected for the project, Mr. Bhargava said. Now, it does not seem that this project will be able to continue actively. Mr. Bhargava said that he was “disappointed” with development. “There was a lot of effort in this. I think people were interested in it. But I think if these things are there, whatever we can publish with us.”
The Cinematograph Act, 1952 CBFC needs to publish a certificate for films in India’s Gazette. CBFC does not do this, it confirmed in RTI response Hindu In May, instead the certificate details were provided in an indefedexed fashion on the e-sensory portal. CBFC did not comment on compliance with this mandate.
CBFC cut lists are available on scanning certificates that are provided to multiplexes and theaters. However, not all certified films end, and CBFC has nine offices certifying thousands of films, and thus, the scope of films whose cuts can be disclosed publicly, which has been compressed for films already released in theaters.
Published – June 25, 2025 08:54 pm IST
