BANGALORE: Id, Monday,15 November, was a tumultuous day and the start of a tumultuous week at Cauvery theater in Bangalore. Plans to release Veer Zara were temporarily put on the back burner for the morning show due to protests from activists sent by the Kannada film lobby.
Many of them landed up in police custody to join some of their brethren who had been arrested a day before.
Of the three theaters, which had decided to release Veer Zara on Monday, Cauvery was the only one that went ahead with the release. The morning show had to canceled because of the protests. The theater later went ahead with the screening of the evening and the night shows, but, only balcony tickets were sold to prevent damage to the screen if any miscreants filtered thorough the body search carried out on every patron who wanted to see the movie by the police.
The other two theaters backed out from screening the movie on Monday because the police chief said he did not have sufficient policemen to deploy to all the theaters in view of the Id celebrations. Since Tuesday, Vaibhav and Swagth have started screening the film amidst tight police security. The film has been distributed directly by Yash Chopra.
Tuesday afternoon saw serpentine queues outside Cauvery theater in spite of a self-immolation bid by some activists of the Kannada Rakshana Vedike, 12 of whom were arrested.
The KFPA had plans to take to the streets from last Thursday onwards to protest the defying of the 'self-imposed' three-week moratorium forced on the exhibitors during a meeting called for by the government formed Pandey committee on 20 October. This meeting was chaired by the Deputy CM of the state.
However, following Chopra's threat to approach the Supreme Court against the government and the police commissioner for contempt of Court, chief minister Dharam Singh intervened late last evening and averted what could possibly have been a violent showdown between the exhibitors and the KFPA activists. The KFPA has decided to put on hold their plans to take to the streets.
