New Delhi: The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting on Wednesday (September 16) reconstituted the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) with 18 new members for a period of three years.Prior to this, the CBFC was last reconstituted was in August 1, 2017, despite the Cinematograph Rules stating that the Board should be reconstituted every three years, reported Indian Express.The Rules say that the term of existing members shall continue till new members are appointed.The new Board has two Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) politicians including actor Rupali Ganguly who joined the BJP in 2024 and singer Hans Raj Hans, who was previously a BJP MP from North-West Delhi between 2019 and 2024.Actor-producer Pallavi Joshi is another member of the newly re-constituted CBFC. Joshi is one of the producers of the 2022 movie The Kashmir Files, which was co-produced and directed by her spouse, Vivek Agnihotri. Notably, Agnihotri was a member of the previous CBFC Board.After the release The Kashmir Files in 2022, critics had questioned the movie’s approach to the Kashmir issue, and expressed concern over the way the film was weaponised as a tool by Sangh Parivar and BJP activists and leaders to stoke anti-Muslim hatred on a mass scale.Multiple videos had emerged from movie theatres of aggressive young men inciting physical violence and calling for the boycott of Muslims.The new members also include well-known film personalities such as actors Preity Zinta, Suniel Shetty, Pankaj Tripathi, and Prasenjit Chatterjee, among others.The new members also include writer-columnist Yatindra Mishra, filmmaker Nila Madhab Panda, film and art critic Vinod Anupam, Marathi actor and writer Nishigandha Wad, writer and activist Ramesh Patange, and Telugu film producer Supriya Yarlagadda, veteran filmmaker Priyadarshan, music composer Ricky Kej, film writer and director Abhishek Jain and actor Manoj Joshi.Earlier in May this year, former Prasar Bharati chief executive officer Shashi Shekhar Vempati was appointed as the chairperson of the CBFC.The film certification board has recently banned, censored or delayed a variety of creative projects including Honey Trehan’s Satluj, a Billie Elish concert film and H. Vinoth’s Jana Nayagan (starring now Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay). Earlier this month, following the intervention of the Punjab and Haryana high court, the CBFC withdrew orders denying film certification to a Punjabi feature film titled Chardikala.RSS forms ‘informal’ group to tackle ‘cultural pollution’ on OTT platformsMeanwhile, Indian Express also reported that the BJP’s ideological fountainhead the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has constituted an informal group to recommend ways to tackle what it terms “cultural pollution” on Over the Top (OTT) platforms where videos are streamed.Citing sources, the newspaper reported that the panel comprises several members including former vice-chancellors and pracharaks engaged in the fields of education and culture.The development comes two years after RSS sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat called OTT (Over the Top) content a driver of “moral corruption”.“This is an informal group and a proposal will be made which will ultimately be submitted to the Union Ministry of Culture and other stakeholders in the central government to deal with the dirt coming out on OTT platforms. We need something like a censor board to deal with this cultural pollution affecting our families and the young generation in particular,” a source in the RSS told the newspaper.Back in October 2024, Bhagwat had targeted OTT content in his annual Vijayadashami address delivered in Nagpur.“The kind of things shown on OTT platforms are so disgusting that talking about it too would be indecent… There is a need to regulate it through law because it is also one of the big reasons for moral corruption,” the RSS chief had then said, blaming the OTT platforms for alleged “perversion in society”.