On 25 October it was reported that scripts, censor cut lists and distribution contracts for more than five hundred films had leaked out of the CBFC’s certification portal. On 26 October the CBFC issued an advisory. It is about filmmakers submitting tidier paperwork.
We are going to be careful here, because the timing is suggestive and no reporting actually links the two. Our report on the breach is here. The advisory, signed by CBFC chief executive Rajendra Singh and reported by Outlook on 2 November and ThePrint on 3 November, makes no mention of the breach. Neither outlet connects them. So treat the one-day gap as a coincidence until somebody shows otherwise.
What the advisory says
Issued under the Cinematograph Act, 1952 and the Cinematograph (Certification) Rules, 2024, it tells producers to submit only finished films: final credits, subtitles, disclaimers, certificate slates, final music and sound. Incomplete or placeholder versions may be delayed, returned or rejected outright. Only the certified version may be exhibited.
Two bureaucratic lines matter more than they look. The official date of receipt is now the date an application is accepted as complete, and examination begins only after the formalities are done. And a producer’s announced title is not automatically final, with the Board pointing to Section 5B(1) of the Act and Rule 25 of the 2024 Rules as the basis for reviewing it.
Then the sentence that will annoy every producer in India, in Outlook’s paraphrase: the CBFC will not be responsible for delays caused by filmmakers’ self-imposed schedules.
In other words: announcing a release date does not move you up the queue.
The genuinely good part, which nobody led on
Buried in a scolding is a real win. The advisory asks submissions to include accessibility features, specifically captions and audio descriptions.
India has around seventy million people with disabilities and a theatrical business that has historically served almost none of them. Audio description for blind viewers and captions for deaf viewers are cheap, well-understood and almost never provided. Folding them into the certification submission is the single most effective lever available, because certification is the one step no film can skip.
It is an advisory rather than a mandate, so it has no teeth. But it is the right instrument and the right stage, and it deserved a headline rather than a bullet point.
The queue argument, fairly put
The CBFC’s position is defensible. Producers do submit unfinished films with placeholder music and missing credits in order to get a slot, then supply the real version later, which means the Board examines a film twice and the queue backs up for everyone. Certification officers are not numerous. If a film is going to be re-examined anyway, the first submission wasted the committee’s day.
The producers’ position is also defensible. Release dates are set by distributors, exhibitors and marketing spends that are committed months out, and post-production in India finishes when the money arrives rather than when the plan said it would. Telling a producer to submit only a locked film is telling him to lose his release date, and there is no forum in which to argue the point.
Both of those are true. What is missing is any published service standard from the CBFC: how long examination takes, what the backlog is, what a producer can expect. The Board has set out what filmmakers owe it. It has not said what it owes them.
And on the breach, five days of silence
We looked specifically for a follow-up and there is none inside this window. No forensic result, no CERT-In finding, no ministry statement, and nothing on whether the public register of censor cuts, which is supposed to be available under Section 5A(2) of the Act and had been showing an “under maintenance” message, has been restored.
The Board’s position as of 29 and 30 October: it found no trace of the documents being accessed, it has filed a cybercrime complaint, it has notified CERT-In, its technical team has analysed servers and databases, a forensic examination is ongoing, no account holder has reported an unauthorised login, certification has continued uninterrupted, and a portal security audit will follow after the forensic report.
Then this, from Deccan Chronicle on 30 October. Supriya Yarlagadda, who is both executive director of Annapurna Studios and a member of the CBFC: “The CBFC has not formally informed us of any breach.” And: “So these are just rumours, as of now.”
A sitting member of the Board does not know. Eleven days after the material was taken down and five days after it was reported, the body’s own members are learning about it from the newspapers, which is why one of them is publicly calling it a rumour.
Bengaluru Baath Take
Put the two documents side by side and the asymmetry is the story.
Filmmakers must now submit complete films, with final sound, final credits, accessibility features and nothing provisional, or risk being returned or rejected. The Board, meanwhile, cannot say how its own files reached a public file-sharing site, has not told its own members, will audit the portal only after the forensics are done, and has not restored the one register the law requires it to publish.
We are not against the advisory. The queue problem is real, the accessibility requirement is overdue and good, and asking for a locked film is a reasonable thing to ask.
But an institution that compels disclosure owes a standard of care in return, and right now the only party in this relationship facing consequences for incomplete paperwork is the one that has to hand over its script.
Two things we will keep asking for. The forensic result, published. And the cut register, switched back on.
