The government has reconstituted the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), appointing 18 members for a three-year term. The new board comes in at a time when film certification has increasingly been a matter of debate among filmmakers and audiences.

The reconstitution had been pending for some time. According to an I&B Ministry official quoted by NDTV, some members of the previous board were no longer active, while the terms of others had ended. The CBFC is generally reconstituted once every three years. However, the previous board was last formed in 2017 and had 12 members.

The latest changes come amid renewed discussions around the film certification process, particularly following several high-profile cases involving delays, cuts and release-related hurdles.

One such case is Diljit Dosanjh’s Satluj, which was earlier titled Punjab 95. The film remained stuck in the certification process for almost three years after it was submitted to the CBFC in 2022. Its makers had claimed that the board had asked for as many as 127 cuts.

The film eventually made its way to ZEE5 in July under the title Satluj. It was released without the reported cuts but was taken down from the streaming platform in India within 48 hours.