The committee headed by multiple award-winning Indian director and screenwriter Shyam Benegal, which was instated to reform the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), has made some seemingly liberal recommendations.

Chief among them are, taking away CBFC’s ‘power’ to censor films, adding more categories to the existing three (U, U/A, A), and denying certification if the rating asked for is too mild for the actual content in the film, or if the film in question contravenes the ‘sovereignty and integrity of India’.

Before I explain why the Benegal committee’s recommendations are not good for the CBFC, it’s necessary to understand how the Board works in the present.

Currently, any filmmaker can submit their films to the CBFC and receive a list of modifications that they can make to get a rating of their choice. When the CBFC doesn’t want any changes, the filmmakers get a certificate immediately.

While this system is censorious, it is worth noting that it is infinitely more transparent than film certification boards in other Asian countries like China, or even the United States’ (US) Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), where no information is made available on the censors’ deliberations on a film.

In India, lists of recommended cuts are readily available for both the filmmaker and the public to scrutinise. They are even provided on the Board’s website, and can be accessed by filing a Right to Information (RTI) application. The CBFC is surprisingly rarely credited for its transparency, as critics overlook it and focus instead on how unnecessary it is as an institution, or to lambast individual chairpersons heading it.

This power — of transparently suggesting modifications — will be taken away from the CBFC if the Benegal committee has its way. In the absence of this power, the CBFC will, in all likelihood, simply refuse to give certificates to films that they believe need to be edited to get a rating of the producer’s choice.

Benegal panel’s recommendations allow for this to happen. The committee says that a certificate can be denied to a filmmaker if a film crosses the ‘ceiling’ of content acceptable in the desired rating. Based on precedent, it is safe to say that where exactly this ceiling stands will be a matter of fierce disagreement among the Board’s members.