Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) chairperson Pahlaj Nihalani was upset with media, especially television producers, for showing a clip of Shah Rukh Khan-starer “Jab Harry Met Sejal” without proper certification and permission. The Censor Board chief didn’t give his approval to the usage of the word ‘intercourse’ mentioned in a dialogue from the film and shown in its second mini trail. He asked the channel to stop circulating the mini trail until the Board gives the required permission to it. Soon after, he threw an open challenge saying he will pass the word if they can get more than 1 lakh votes within a week saying that they are okay with the word ‘intercourse’ used in the second mini trail of the movie. The channel accepted his challenge gladly and conducted a poll asking for the votes for a week.
Now when the channel has won the challenge with one lakh favourable votes, Nihalani is refusing to talk to any journalist and even is he is doing so, he saying different things!
He said, “They claim they’ve got 1 lakh voters to say they are fine with Shah Rukh talking about intercourse on screen. I don’t believe them. I think it’s Shah Rukh’s fans on Twitter endorsing the use of the word ‘intercourse’. He has millions of followers on Twitter. If among them a lakh say yes to his dialogue, what is the big deal? Show me a lakh of ticket-paying members of the audience approving of an actor with a family image talking so blatantly about sex, and then we’ll see.”
Earlier when the channel was gathering votes, he had said, “We’re still waiting for the relevant channel to gather one lakh votes in favour of Shah Rukh discussing ‘intercourse’. So far they haven’t even crossed 50,000. It is strange that Shah Rukh Khan has millions of followers on Twitter but not one lakh of them have come forward to say they approve of his ‘intercourse’ talk. That means something.”
When he got asked about why didn’t he clarify the same with the journalist, He excused saying, “She was just a young girl asking these embarrassing questions. Sorry, I may be old fashioned or fuddy-duddy as the news channel calls me. But I can’t talk about sex with a reporter young enough to be my daughter. She insisted and kept following me right into the lift. To my credit, I kept my cool. What if I had lost my temper? She’d gave gone back and made a story about sexual harassment against me.”
Pahlaj eventually went on to blame the channel for ‘attacking’ him to promote their channel.