Akshay Kumar’s Pad Man was suppose to hit the theatres along with Padmaavat on January 25, but couple of days back, both Sanjay Leela Bhansali and Akshay together announced that the clash won’t happen. Hence Pad Man will now release on February 9 along with Neeraj Pandey’s Aiyaary. While Padmaavat is still surrounded by a number of controversies, now Pad Man too is grabbing the headlines, and not for the good reasons.
The team of Pad Man is going all out when it comes to the promotions of the film. It is being marketed as the first film, which talks about periods and mensuration hygiene. For those of you who don’t know, Pad Man, which is produced by Akshay’s wife, Twinkle Khanna and directed by R Balki is inspired from the life of Arunachalam Muruganantham, a Tamil Nadu-based social activist who revolutionized the concept of menstrual hygiene in rural India by creating a low-cost sanitary napkins machine.
However, now another director Abhishek Saxena has put some strong allegations on the makers of Pad Man. In an interview with Deccan Chronicle, Abhishek, who directed the 2017 film, Phullu, which was also inspired from the life of Arunachalam Muruganantham has claimed that not Pad Man, but his film was the first film on periods and menstruation. He revealed that he registered his film in 2015 and already had the censor certificate.
Not just that he has also alleged the Central Board of Film Certification of being biased towards Akshay and Twinkle’s film as Pad Man has been passed with a UA certificate, while Phullu was given an A certificate. “CBFC told me that this “Menstruation” subject in itself is an “Adult” subject and they gave us an “A” certificate. They are being partial, because of the “A” certificate we faced so many losses,” Saxena was quoted. He added that just like Akshay, even he wanted to”educate the masses, show to the film to school children.”
Phullu starred Sharib Hashmi, Jyotii Sethi, and Nutan Surya, while Pad Man features Akshay, Radhika Apte and Sonam Kapoor.
