The Army refused to grant a No Objection Certificate (NOC) for a movie because it showed a romantic relationship between an Army officer and a local Kashmiri boy, which would have shown the Army in poor light, the Defence Ministry said in a written response in the Lok Sabha on Friday. The ministry said that a total of 18 proposals were received from January 1, 2021 to January 31, 2022, by the Army, of which one was rejected and one is still pending.
In response to a question by BJP MP Varun Gandhi, Minister of State for Defence Ajay Bhatt said that the “the reason for refusal for granting NOC is the portrayal of a romantic relationship between an Army soldier serving in Kashmir and a local boy which casts Indian Army in poor light and raises security issues.”
In January, filmmaker Onir had stated that a film proposal by him was rejected by the Army, which was based on the life of a retired Indian Army officer who is gay. In an interview to The Indian Express, Onir had said that the idea behind the movie was “to create a dialogue” and “there was no criticism of the army but it talks about certain situations. But the way you make a film and the discourse it initiates are different from the situation when the script goes to a person who probably has no idea about cinema.”
In the response to the Lok Sabha on Friday, MoS Defence Bhatt said that the approval process “is not arbitrary/discriminatory in nature nor does it violate Article 14 of the Constitution of…
