Indu Sarkar: Now, Congress' Vivek Khandelwal, Girish Joshi write letter to ban film in Indore

Dubbing filmmaker Madhur Bhandarkar’s upcoming film Indu Sarkar as a political ploy of the BJP, local Congress leaders today said the party will not allow its screening in the cinema halls in the city. [caption id=“attachment_3518733” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Poster of Indu Sarkar.[/caption] “Under the garb of the freedom of expression, the movie touches the subject of Emergency. It purposefully features the lookalikes of (former Prime Minister) Indira Gandhi and her son late Sanjay Gandhi to sully our party’s image,” City Congress general secretaries Girish Joshi and Vivek Khandelwal said in a statement. The movie, slated to release on July 28, will not be allowed to be screened in the cinema halls at any cost, states a PTI report. The leaders said letters have been written to film distributors, the Central Cine Circuit Association, Indore, and cinema halls operators against screening of the film. In response to the allegations made by these Congress party workers, Madhur Bhandarkar said, “I don’t know what to say, really. The members of the Congress have asked Maharashtra Chief Minister to intervene in the matter too. Yesterday in Lucknow a mob burnt my effigy, there were some news from Allahabad too. I think this is a kind of knee-jerk reaction, really. They haven’t even seen the film," according to a report by The Indian Express. Indu Sarkar has landed itself into one controversy after the other over the past few weeks. First, Congress member Sanjay Nirupam wrote a letter to CBFC chief Pahlaj Nihalani asking him to arrange a ‘pre-screening’ for Congress party workers to clear the movie from the Congress’ side, to which Nihalani issued a statement wherein he said he was not obligated to respond to Nirupam’s letter.

Then, Congress leader Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil wrote a letter to Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis asking him to stop the release of Indu Sarkar.  After this Bhandarkar’s movie was screened for the CBFC and 14 cuts were suggested , at which the movie’s director was apparently ‘appalled’. With all these controversies throwing this movie into the deep end time and time again, the fate of Bhandarkar’s semi-fiction work based on the Indian Emergency of 1975 remains to be seen. With inputs from PTI