Madras High Court Closes Plea Seeking Reconsideration Of “Jana Nayagan” Movie Certification For Alleged Objectionable Content
The Madras High Court has disposed of a plea seeking direction to the Central Board of Film Certification to reconsider the certificate of Chief Minister Vijay's “Jana Nayagan” movie for alleged objectionable scenes. [2026 LiveLaw (Mad) 401]
The bench of Justice CV Karthikeyan and Justice R Sakthivel had noted that the grievance of the petitioner was that in one scene of the movie, objectionable remarks were made against his village “Pappapatti” in Usialampatti Taluk, Madurai.
The court, however, perused the script of the movie and found that the movie only made reference to a fictional village “Pappampatti” and not the petitioner's village. The court remarked that though it aligned with the anguish expressed by the villagers, the reference in the movie was only to a fictional village and the producers never intended to harm the reputation of the village.
“We align ourselves with the expressions of anguish of the villagers of Papappatti, but we would only assure that the reference in the movie was certainly not to ''PAPPAPATTI'' village in Usialampatti Taluk, Madurai District, but to an entirely fictional village. We are confident that the producers of the movie never had an intention to harm the reputation or even to cause any mental harm to any of the villagers of ''PAPPAPATTI'' village,” the court held.
The court was hearing a plea filed by M Chinnasamy. Chinnasamy contended that in one of the scenes in the movie, a voice-over is made in the line that while the elections were being held all over Tamil Nadu, the people of Pappampatti village boycotted the elections for the third time due to caste issues.
The petitioner argued that the reference to Pappampatti was actually a reference to the petitioner's village and it was very coincidental since the petitioner's village was afflicted with caste issues and had boycotted elections.
The court, however, noted that as per the script, the name of the village was Pappampatti and not Pappapatti. The court also noted that the script did not make any reference to a Taluk or to a District and was only a creative imagination of the script writer.
The court was thus inclined to dismiss the plea. However, understanding the grievance of the petitioner, the court instead recorded that it was disposing the plea.
Counsel for Petitioner: Mr. S. Vidhya Sagar
Counsel for Respondent: Mr. M. Karthikeya Vengadachalapathy CGSTC
Case Title: M Chinnasamy v The Chairperson CBFC
Citation: 2026 LiveLaw (Mad) 401
Case No: WP(MD) No 21450 of 2026