Supreme Court Lifts Ban On 'Aarakshan' In UP

The Supreme Court has lifted the two-month ban imposed by the Uttar Pradesh government on the screening of filmmaker Prakash Jha's "Aarakshan".

In a historical judgement the bench of Justice Mukundakam Sharma and Justice Anil R. Dave said the state government cannot seek deletion of certain portions of the film as this amounted to pre-censorship. The court said: "Reservation is a very delicate and also one of the social issues and in a vibrant democracy like ours public discussion is necessary for its (democracy's) functioning."

Justice Sharma said: "In fact, such discussions on social issues bring awareness which is required for effective working of democracy. In fact, when there is such public discussion and dissent there would be an informed public opinion which is necessary for our society."

Rejecting the Uttar Pradesh government's argument that the High Level Committee (HLC) set up to review the film has suggested deletion of some portions, the court said that "powers of pre-censorship is non-existent and thus not available to either HLC or the state government".

Senior counsel Harish Salve who was representing Poducer-director of "Aarakshan" Prakash Jha, said that the Uttar Pradesh government had no right to block this movie as it has already got censorship clearance and also no state government had any right to control the content of the film.

Salve said if such a situation was allowed then even after certification by CBFC, all the states would try to impose their own pre-censorship. State government could appeal against the certification by the CBFC but not confront the film makers with conditions of pre-censorship.

"Aarakshan" has released last week at rest of India and in the first week it collected over 25 crores from ticket selling. Aarakshan deals with caste-based reservations in the Indian education system, starring Amitabh Bachchan, Saif Ali Khan and Deepika Padukone.