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Former CBFC chairman Pahlaj Nihalani has reignited his feud with filmmaker Anurag Kashyap, claiming that the director intentionally leaks his own films and manufactures controversies for publicity. The allegations have added a new chapter to their long-standing conflict over censorship.
September 12, 2025: Anurag Kashyap and Pahlaj Nihalani, who used to be the head of the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), are having a new fight. He thinks Kashyap makes scandals on purpose and even gives away his own movies to get people to talk about them.
In a recent interview with Pinkvilla, Nihalani revealed that during the 2016 fight over the censorship of Udta Punjab, the film’s co-producers, Ektaa and Shobha Kapoor, were eager to make the adjustments that the CBFC requested for. Nihalani, on the other hand, says that Kashyap, who was also a co-producer on the movie, didn’t want the adjustments since “the movie wasn’t getting hot enough.”
Nihalani’s claims didn’t end there. He then added that Kashyap’s “business point” was to leak his own movies and that he makes money off of the mess that follows. “He would leak videos; this was his business point, and he makes money off of that,” Nihalani claimed. He was talking about how Udta Punjab got out before it did.
Anurag Kashyap hasn’t stated anything new about these new claims. However, experts in the profession have strongly condemned the comments, pointing out that Kashyap has had a very public fight with Nihalani in the past. In 2016, Kashyap asserted that Nihalani was running a “dictatorial” and “erratic” board and that the requests for censorship were a way to “blackmail” him. He also said that the movie didn’t have any political purpose. Two famous actors, Amitabh Bachchan and Aamir Khan, also came out against the CBFC’s “malicious” demands and backed the folks who made Udta Punjab. The filmmakers won in the end, and the Bombay High Court only changed one thing in the movie.
The recent claims have made the already tense relationship between the two Bollywood actors even more so. They also show how censorship and creative freedom are still at odds in the Indian film industry.