Jabalpur: The Madhya Pradesh High Court today lifted the ban imposed by the state government on screening of Hritik Roshan-Aishwarya Rai starrer Jodhaa Akbar.

A division bench of Chief Justice A K Patnaik and Justice Prakash Srivastava, ordered the state government to lift the ban on a petition filed by the UTV Software and Communications Ltd, producers of the movie, saying that it did not have proper basis to pass such an order.

The bench arrived at the decision after the state government submitted a report to substantiate their order of suspending screening of the movie as it "posed threat to maintenance of peace in view of protests" by Rajput community.

Incidents of violence were reported at a few places where the movie was being screened but the law and order situation had not worsened to the extent that screening of the movie had to be stopped, the court observed.

The petition was referred to the division bench by Justice S S Kemkar yesterday.

The movie directed by Ashutosh Gowarikar had sparked protests from the Rajput community prompting the Madhya Pradesh government to suspend screening of the movie in the state due to threat posed to maintenance of peace on February 22.

The petitioner contended that the commercial tax department had no authority to issue such an order as law and order was a subject of the home department.

Describing the depiction of the Jodhaa Bai as Akbar's wife in the Bollywood movie as an "insult" to the community, many Rajput organisations in the state had threatened to burn the movie reels and cinema halls screening the film.
Source : PTI