Alia-Varun lip-lock in Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania to be axed?

The Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) has recently objected to a kissing scene between Alia Bhatt and Varun Dhawan in Karan Johar’s “Humpty Sharma ki Dulhania”.

The film’s yet-to-be-out trailer faced trouble as a kissing scene between the actors was objected to by the CBFC. After their disapproval, Johar’s team presented examples of numerous recent releases which carried the same without any objection.

After several arguments, a compromise was reached: the trailer could only show a long shot of the couple kissing after the closeup shots of the couple were deleted from the trailer.

This move came as a surprise, as the board has been relaxing their censorship with many films including Johar’s “2 States” which had several kissing scenes between the lead actors, Arjun Kapoor and Alia Bhatt. And the film’s official trailer had also carried lip locks, which became one of the most talked about scenes of the film.

A source close to the censor board reported that from now on, regional censor boards have been asked to handle sequences like intimate scenes with sensitivity. The report went on to relate the board’s new outlook with the change of guard in the central government.

"Because of Censor Board's strict rules and regulations, we are not able to do such kind of films. Then how will the market expand or the people come to theatres to watch Kannada films. If we have to compete against other language films, there has to be some exposing scenes in the film. But the Censor Board does not allow exposing scenes," the director told The Times of India.

There have been several cases when the Censor Board’s objection to content made them lock horns with filmmakers. One such incident is with “Dirty Picture” from which 59 scenes were cut. Recently, Anurag Kashyap has openly raised his voice against the board’s guidelines to censor smoking scenes, which he feels is a disruption to a filmmaker’s creative license.