A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) has been filed against the movie ‘The Accidental Prime Minister’ in the Delhi High Court. The PIL has been filed by a Delhi-based fashion designer Pooja Mahajan through her lawyer Arun Mattri claiming that the film will harm the reputation of the office of Prime Minister. The movie is based on the book ‘The Accidental Prime Minister’ written by Sanjaya Baru, who was the media advisor of former prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh during the UPA government.
The petitioner had earlier filed a plea in the Delhi High Court on Monday which was rejected by a single-judge bench of the court. The court had asked the petitioner to file the plea as a PIL as the petitioner has no personal interest in the case. The petitioner is seeking a ban on the trailer of the movie which is available on Youtube. The plea states that as per the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) guidelines on films based on real-life characters, a ‘No-Objection Certificate’ (NOC) is required but the producers of the film have neither taken the consent of Former PM Manmohan Singh, Congress President Rahul Gandhi and his mother and Former Congress President Sonia Gandhi to perform their characters nor have they obtained the NOC.
The petitioner has sought the directions to the Centre, Google, Youtube and the CBFC to take necessary steps to stop the display of the trailer. This comes after a lawyer named Sudhir Kumar Ojha filed a case on Jan 3 in the court of Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM) Mujaffarpur in Bihar against the actors of the movie for damaging the image of some top people. An FIR was ordered to be filed against the actors in the film based on Ojha’s plea by the Sub Divisional Judge (East).