The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected urgent hearing to a plea filed against The Accidental Prime Minister and its trailer ahead of the film’s release on January 11, PTI reported. Petitioner Pooja Mahajan had sought an urgent hearing in the top court against the Delhi High Court’s decision to dismiss her public interest litigation against the film.
The film features actor Anupam Kher as former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. It is based on Sanjaya Baru’s 2014 memoir of the same name and details Singh’s relationship with the Congress party’s Gandhi family.
Mahajan, a Delhi-based fashion designer, had claimed that the film and its trailer had defamed the constitutional post of the prime minister. She had alleged that the film misused the provisions of the Cinematograph Act. She claimed that the movie and the trailer affected the image of the office of the prime minister and gave it a bad name at both national and international levels.
The petitioner had sought the top court’s intervention in the exhibition of the film’s trailer as well as the release and exhibition of the movie. On January 9, the Delhi High Court had said Mahajan had no locus standi to file the plea and that she was moved by private interest.
The plea had listed the Centre, through the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, the Central Board of Film Certification, Google (India) and YouTube as respondents.
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