As he points out, there have been instances of makers abusing the rulebook from a different perspective, where there have been two different versions of the movie being shown, one to the board and the other to the audience.
The fact that a significant draw for successful films of popular actors that celebrated explicit violence — including Pokiri, Legend and Yevadu — were children, despite being adult-only certified, only highlights the disrespect that the certificate has had among the public and theatre owners over the years.
As a result, the entire point of the board’s functioning comes into question whereas the arbitrary decision making is equally hazardous despite enough regulations in place to keep such malicious activities under check.
Does this call for an abolishment of the board in itself? Director, producer Madhura Sreedhar doesn’t subscribe to that school of thought when he says, “I can’t ridicule the existence of the CBFC as that would essentially mean free license to those who can make just about any film sans regulations. But the double standards which I faced, for nearly every film of mine, need to go.”
