Vinayak Azad, regional officer of the board in Mumbai, said they ran out of money as there are too many films and videos releasing these days.
Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) members have not been paid honorariums for six months. There are so many films and videos releasing nowadays that the board has overshot its budget.
“This is the third occasion in recent times that payments have been delayed. But never before have I seen a six-month delay,” said Nandini Sardesai, member of the examining committee in Mumbai.
Vinayak Azad, regional officer of the board in Mumbai, said they ran out of money as there are too many films and videos releasing these days.
“We got funds from the (Information & Broadcasting) ministry. We will clear the dues very soon. We have never seen such a long payment delay before. This is because that the number of films and videos releasing has gone up sharply. We ran out of money while reviewing them,” Azad said.
I&B ministry sources said the number of films and videos releasing in India has gone up 12 times over 10 years. In 1998, the CBFC issued about 3,206 certificates for films and videos. In 2007, the number went up to 20,498 certificates.
The number went up as the board also censors promos now.
The number of certificates from nine regions - Trivandrum, Mumbai, Bangalore, Cuttack, Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata, Guwahati and Hyderabad - hovered around 35,000 in 2007-2008, board sources said.
The I&B ministry has not increased the honorarium and grants accordingly. “We have received about Rs2 crore from the ministry for Mumbai. That is simply not enough. We will run out of money again,” said another official.
Union minister of state Anand Sharma is assisting prime minister Manmohan Singh in looking after the ministry after Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi suffered a heart attack, his second in three months, on October 13 last year. Though Dasmunshi has been taken off life support, he is recuperating in the intensive care unit of Apollo Hospital in New Delhi.
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