CBFC chairman Pahlaj Nihalani removed as censor board chief

Pahlaj Nihalani's tenure as CBFC chief was riddled with controversies. Movies like Aligarh, Udta Punjab, Unfreedom, Ka Bodyscape, Lipstick Under My Burkha, Indu Sarkar and Babumoshai Bandookbaaz, among others had to face the brunt of CBFC during Nihalani's stewardship.His candidature as the CBFC chief was said to have been pushed by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which also supported the controversial FTII chairman Gajendra Chauhan.

During Nihalani's tenure, the CBFC had issues with homosexuality (Unfreedom, Ka Bodyscapes, Aligarh), the word lesbian (Dum Laga Ke Haisha), the word intercourse (Jab Harry Met Sejal trailer) and the use of names of states in film (Udta Punjab, The Argumentative Indian). The Amartya Sen documentary was also asked to take out words "cow", "Hindu" and "India"

Films such as Fifty Shades of Grey were never released in India despite the producers agreeing to 70 cuts. A kissing scene from James Bond film Spectre was trimmed.

Films that got an adults-only certificate and yet underwent cuts include Hansal Mehta's critically-acclaimed Aligarh. One of the cuts actually showed Manoj Bajpayee dozing off in the courtroom that the CBFC thought was contempt of court. Lipstick Under My Burkha had to be re-edited before it was allowed release. After being deemed "fantasy above life" and "lady oriented", the film underwent below cuts before it released with an adults-only certification.

Joshi, a Padma Shri awardee, received the National Film Award for Best Lyrics twice, for his work in Taare Zameen Par (2007), and Chittagong (2013).