The Akhilesh government has landed itself in another controversy by issuing a directive to all district magistrates and chairpersons of the district road safety committees to impose a strict ban on scenes in films, commercials, or television series that show violation of road safety rules. UP transport commissioner K. Ravindra Naik has said that such videos and publicity material tends to have an adverse impact on viewers, especially the youth among them, and must be banned in order to the curb the tendency to flout road safety norms. The department says that the order has been issued considering the large number of accidental deaths and grievous injuries caused to people during road accidents every year. The order, which comes into effect immediately, will also mean that district magistrates will now monitor content being beamed into homes via the direct-to-home or cable operator route. The “objectionable” content would not only be banned locally, but the state government will also raise a pitch, where necessary, for a clamp down at “higher” levels, where content cannot be blocked locally. This means that scenes where the person is shown riding without a helmet, driving without a seat belt, drunk driving, speeding, burning rubber and performing wheelies may not longer be allowed in Uttar Pradesh. “This is downright ridiculous. If the order does get implemented, it would mean that we can never see films by Rohit Shetty whose flying cars are the major attraction of his films. Even old films like Muqaddar ka Sikandar where Amitabh Bachchan rides a motorbike without a helmet will have to be blacked out in the state. The Akhilesh government’s diktat amounts to an infringement of one’s personal freedom,” said Rakesh Kapoor, a film buff. The manager of a multiplex in the Gomti Nagar locality said that the government order was “ridiculous and impractical”. “Once the censor board has cleared a film, a state government cannot do this kind of policing. The business of cinema will crash in UP which is one of the biggest territories in the country,” he said. A district magistrate posted in eastern UP said that it would be impossible to monitor content on TV round-the-clock. “In any case, this is not practical but we do not know what to do about it,” he said.