Centre Reconstitutes CBFC After Nine Years, Preity Zinta, Pankaj Tripathi and Suniel Shetty Among 18 New Members

NEW DELHI — The Government of India's Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has reconstituted the Central Board of Film Certification, bringing in an 18-member panel that includes several prominent names from Indian cinema, for the first time in nearly nine years. The move was formalised through an official notification dated September 16, 2026, with the new board coming into effect immediately for a period of three years or until further orders, whichever comes first. The reconstitution was carried out under Section 3(1) of the Cinematograph Act, 1952, read with Rule 3 of the Cinematograph (Certification) Rules, 2024, giving the new committee statutory backing as it takes charge of one of India's most closely watched regulatory bodies. The announcement was made public through the CBFC's official social media channels, and it landed with particular weight in the film industry given how long the board had gone without a full refresh.

Who's on the New Board

The 18-member panel draws from cinema, television, music, literature and the performing arts, reflecting an effort to broaden the board's composition beyond film actors alone. According to Bollywood Hungama's reporting, the members include Vinod Anupam, Manoj Joshi, Abhishek Jain, composer Ricky Kej, filmmaker Priyadarshan, actor Suniel Shetty, singer Hansraj Hans, Supriya Yarlagadda, poet Yatindra Mishra, actor-director Rupali Ganguly, actor Preity Zinta, filmmaker Nila Madhab Panda, actor Pankaj Tripathi, Bengali cinema veteran Prosenjit Chatterjee, actor Pallavi Joshi, Nishigandha Wad, theatre director Waman Kendre, and Ramesh Patange. These 18 members are set to constitute the board's Revising Committee, the body responsible for reviewing certification appeals and contentious cases referred up from the examining committees.

Several names on the list carry significant weight within their respective fields. Preity Zinta, who made her Bollywood debut in 1998 with "Dil Se.." and went on to build a career spanning both acting and cricket team ownership through Punjab Kings, brings a mainstream Hindi film perspective to the panel. Pankaj Tripathi, known for his work across both commercial cinema and OTT platforms, and Suniel Shetty, a veteran actor with decades in the industry, round out some of the more recognisable faces.

Prosenjit Chatterjee's inclusion extends the board's reach into Bengali cinema, an addition that stands out given how often certification panels have historically skewed toward Hindi-language representation. Priyadarshan, meanwhile, brings a filmmaker's vantage point to certification decisions that have long been dominated by acting talent rather than those who actually sit behind the camera.

A Confirmed Chairperson: Shashi Shekhar Vempati

Unlike the individual member list, which rests on trade-press reporting, the board's leadership is on firmer, government-confirmed ground. Shashi Shekhar Vempati continues to serve as the CBFC's chairperson, a position he was formally appointed to through a Ministry of Information and Broadcasting notification dated May 6, 2026, as confirmed directly by a Press Information Bureau release. He holds office for a period of three years from the date of joining, meaning his leadership is not new to this reconstitution but predates it by roughly four months.

Vempati, an IIT Bombay alumnus, previously served as CEO of Prasar Bharati between 2017 and 2022, where he was the first non-bureaucrat and the youngest person ever appointed to that role. During his tenure there, he led efforts to modernise Doordarshan and All India Radio's digital presence, and he is also the co-founder of AI4India Org, an initiative focused on expanding access to artificial intelligence in India. He was honoured with the Padma Shri in January 2026 for his contributions to media, technology and public policy, just months before taking on the CBFC role. He succeeded Prasoon Joshi, who had led the CBFC for more than eight years before being elevated to chairman of Prasar Bharati.

Nine Years Without a Full Refresh

The gap since the board's last full-scale reconstitution, in 2017, is significant context for understanding why this announcement generated as much industry attention as it did. Film certification bodies are typically reconstituted every few years to keep pace with changing industry needs and evolving content standards, and an extended gap of this length had left many of the board's advisory and revising panels operating with limited fresh representation for the better part of a decade.

That delay coincided with a period in which India's certification process itself came under sustained public scrutiny, particularly as streaming platforms reshaped how and where audiences consume film content in ways the original certification framework was never designed to anticipate. The Cinematograph (Certification) Rules were themselves updated in 2024, introducing the legal framework under which this latest reconstitution has now been carried out, suggesting the government had been laying regulatory groundwork for this refresh well before the formal announcement this week.

The timing of the reconstitution follows one of the more prolonged and closely watched certification disputes in recent Indian film history, involving a Diljit Dosanjh-starrer originally titled "Punjab 95." According to reporting from The Statesman, the film was submitted to the CBFC in 2022 and remained unreleased for nearly three years, with its makers alleging that the board had sought as many as 127 cuts before it would grant certification.

The film eventually reached audiences in July this year, but only after being retitled "Satluj" and released directly on an OTT platform, sidestepping the traditional theatrical certification pathway that had stalled it for years. It reportedly released without the cuts its makers had originally said were being demanded.

The relief was short-lived. Within 48 hours of its India release, the film was pulled from the platform altogether, adding another layer of controversy to what had already been a years-long saga. While the government has not explicitly linked the board's reconstitution to this episode, the timing has not gone unnoticed by industry commentators, several of whom have pointed to it as emblematic of the kind of prolonged, opaque certification disputes a refreshed board might be better positioned to address going forward.

Echoes of the 2017 Reconstitution

This is not the first time the CBFC has undergone a high-profile overhaul featuring recognisable industry names, and the parallels to the last major reshuffle are hard to miss. When Prasoon Joshi took over as chairperson in 2017, following the sacking of his predecessor Pahlaj Nihalani, his reconstituted board similarly included well-known figures such as national award-winning actor Vidya Balan and filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri.

That 2017 board also included theatre and literary figures like Waman Kendre and Ramesh Patange, both of whom have now returned as members of the current 2026 board as well, offering a degree of institutional continuity even as most of the panel's composition changes around them. Speaking at the time of his own board's appointment, Joshi had struck a collaborative tone about its mixed composition, saying the incoming members would work together constructively rather than through top-down directives.

Whether the current 18-member panel, spanning cinema, music and theatre, brings a similarly collaborative approach to the certification disputes it is likely to inherit remains to be seen.

What Comes Next

With the board now formally reconstituted and in effect immediately, attention will likely turn to how quickly it begins addressing the backlog of certification questions that have accumulated during the extended period without a full refresh. The three-year term now underway gives the new committee a defined runway, though the notification's "until further orders" clause leaves the government some flexibility to revisit the composition before that period concludes, as has occurred with past boards. For now, the involvement of figures like Preity Zinta, Pankaj Tripathi, Suniel Shetty and Prosenjit Chatterjee gives the reconstituted board a visible, recognisable public face, led by Vempati's already-confirmed chairpersonship, at a moment when India's film certification process continues to draw scrutiny from filmmakers navigating an industry increasingly split between traditional theatrical releases and fast-growing OTT platforms that often operate under a different, less centralised set of content rules altogether.