Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi on Friday announced that the government is contemplating a legislation to drastically prune the existing lists of permissions required to be obtained for shooting films by both domestic and overseas film producers and film makers.
Present as the chief guest at conference “Film Tourism – India: The Focal Hub” organised by PHD Chamber on Friday, Naqvi said that the “proposed legislation could be brought about either in the forthcoming winter session or else latest by the budget session of the parliament”.
“The government of the day is totally receptive to the needs of film industry since it connects and accelerates people-to-people contact, besides promoting tourism through films and other such modes of visual communications,” he said.
The Minister said that the government was conscious of the fact that film producers and film makers are subjected to obtaining host of clearances from the central government as well as states before these are permitted to film a particular location at a particular part of the country.
“This delays their schedule of timely deliveries of their production as well subject them to lots of inconveniences. Therefore, the government is going to take corrective measures to sort out this problem through a proper legislation, details of which could not be made public at this juncture because of various reasons but what is being seriously contemplating at the different quarters of the government is a legislation which would come about either in the forthcoming winter session or else latest by the budget session,” he said .
Naqvi’s announcement came immediately after ace filmmakers Prakash Jha and Madhur Bhandarkar jointly urged the government to drastically reduce the list of permissions for film shooting currently numbering close to 35 from various governmental agencies as the current regime is highly bureaucratic and de-incentivize the film makers to shoot spots domestically available and chose to go overseas for the purpose as destinations there are shot with little interactions with authorities.
