Films free of ‘anti-tobacco’ warnings

Zeenews Bureau

Mumbai: Now every time SRK would smoke on-screen, his fans would be spared of the distracting scrolls running below the screen reading the statutory warning. According to a new directive of Information and Broadcasting Ministry, Bollywood can now get through with the smoking scenes without any objection from the monitoring authority. An RTI has revealed that the I&B ministry has asked the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) to "maintain status quo and adhere to the certification process as was being done before the issue of latest notification." That simply means Bollywood movies won`t have to run a scroll with anti-tobacco messages each time a smoking scene is shown. The ministry also asked the Union health ministry “to keep the notification in abeyance till the time the practical difficulties faced by the film industry are resolved amicably.” The film industry has for the time-being put on hold a notification that had come into effect on November 14, 2011. The notification had made it mandatory for all new movies that had smoking/ use of tobacco scenes, to display statutory warnings at the bottom of the screen all through the duration of the scenes.