Filmmaker Prakash Jha on Wednesday offered Bankipore MLA Nitin Navin an apology if the legislator felt offended with the characters of his latest film Jai Gangaajal.
Last month, the three-time Bankipore MLA had served a legal notice on the director, pressing defamation charges, for depicting the lead antagonist of the film as an MLA of a place called Bankipore. The bahubali (strongman) MLA in the movie claims that all activities in his constituency ran according to his wishes, whims and discretion and his diktat was the ultimate word.
Talking to mediapersons during a promotional for the coming Priyanka Chopra release, Jha iterated the script was not based on Bihar and the names – “Bankipore”, “Lakhisarai” and “Madhya Prant” were fictitious.
Jha said: “The name of the place, Bankipore, is coincidental and has no relation with the actual Bankipore (Assembly) constituency in Patna. In Jai Gangaajal, Bankipore is a place in Lakhisarai district in a state called Madhya Prant. Still, if the real-life MLA from Bankipore feels offended, I apologise to him.”
But the filmmaker – who also plays deputy superintendent of police B.N. Singh in the film – lashed out at censor board chief Pahlaj Nihalani for demanding numerous cuts in the movie. He said: “Nihalani demanded at least 72 cuts, including the removal of word saala, which would have distorted the natural flow and texture of the film.”
He later moved a central govt tribunal against the decision of the censor board review committee and got a verdict in his favour, The Telegraph reported.
” Jai Gangaajal is the story based on the relation between society and police in any Hindi-speaking region, and not necessarily Bihar. It can be at any place in north India, including Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and even Maharashtra. I want to make it clear that I have made only two movies based on real incidents in Bihar – Gangaajal and Apaharan – but Jai Gangaajal has nothing to do with Bihar,” Jha added.
Jha also denied that the movie was a sequel to the 2003 Ajay Devgn-starrer Gangaajal. “Except for the depiction of the society-police relationship and actions of the mob, the two movies have no similarity at all. In the role of police officer, Ajay Devgn had said in Gangaajal that society gets the police it wants. Jai Gangaajal tells the story of how the society-police dynamics had changed after 2003, when Gangaajal released,” he said Jha.
On his new experience “on”screen, Jha said: “I was looking for new challenges in my artistic journey and somehow, I could relate to the character of B.N. Singh, who was promoted to the rank of DSP over 30 years, maintaining his relations with various sections of the society.”
The filmmaker is at present working on the script of a sequel to his 2010 blockbusterRaajneeti, taking inspiration from the socio-political scenario in the country.