Mumbai: Producers’ body not retracting ban on Pakistan actors anytime soon

Mumbai: Turns out, Indian Motion Pictures Producers’ Association (IMPPA) is not retracting its stand on the issue of Pakistani actors working in India, anytime soon.

The president of IMPPA, T.P. Aggarwal, talked to ANI about the matter and said that the organisation had opposed the paying of Rs 5 crore to Pakistani artist, Fawad Khan, for a Karan Johar movie. He further claimed that the IMPPA is against the view of allowing Pak artists in Bollywood.

For the unversed, the IMPPA had passed a resolution to ban actors of Pakistani descent from the Indian film industry in the wake of Uri attack in September 2017. Several films, including ‘Ae Dil Hai Mushkil’, received a lot of criticism from political parties post the attacks, which saw 18 Indian jawans dead.

Union Minister Babul Supriyo had on Wednesday called for a temporary ban on Pakistani artists for working in the Hindi film industry. Supriyo, a singer-turned-politician, had said Rahat Fateh Ali Khan’s voice in the song ‘Ishtehar’ from ‘Welcome To New York’ must be removed and dubbed by someone else as he was not able to comprehend the need or desire to cross the border for entertainment content at a time when tensions on the India-Pakistan border had escalated. Supriyo said that he spoke as an Indian first and that a stand needs to be made on temporarily banning Pakistani artistes in Bollywood.