New Delhi, December 5
Indian-origin American porn star Sunny Leone may have escaped her first eviction from Bigg Boss, the prime time reality TV show on an entertainment channel this Saturday, but she has ruffled a lot of feathers outside the celebrity home.

The Broadcasting Content Complaints Council (BCCC), the independent television content regulator, has received 25 complaints regarding Leone’s presence on the show. The Council, which was set up by the Indian Broadcasting Foundation to aid self-regulation by media and entertainment houses, will discuss the complaints at its meeting scheduled for December 23.

Speaking to The Tribune today, Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni confirmed that complaints had been received by the BCCC and said the ministry’s own divisions were also monitoring the content of Bigg Boss closely for any code violations.

“The BCCC has received 25 complaints in respect of Sunny Leone’s presence on the Big Boss and they will look into these. So far as we are concerned, our divisions are constantly monitoring the content. So far, there has been no violation of the content code by the contestant in question. But we still feel that Bigg Boss needs to be shifted to post-11 pm slot so that at least children are not watching,” Soni said.

The debate is back with the appearance of Sunny Leone, whose website has had over 20 million hits since she featured on Big Boss a fortnight ago. She has garnered enough publicity to attract an offer from filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt. Her website, which offers a link to Big Boss, bears the luring description: “The all-new website for adult superstar, porn actress and nude model Sunny Leone…”

Although a section of the broadcasters feels that there’s nothing wrong with having Sunny on the show so long as she honours the content code and doesn’t indulge in nudity, there’s another section, dominated by parents, which contests the logic. “My children are viewing her profile. They have visited the internet to see what she does as a porn actor. It’s disturbing,” a parent says.

Chairperson of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights Shanta Sinha reflected the same view when she told TNS today that the timing of Big Boss needed to be shifted to 12 midnight so that the children don’t watch content which arouses their curiosity and leads them to information they are unable to understand or appreciate.

“The contestant in question was invited to the show because she had a certain profile. So to argue that her profile is independent of her presence on the show is not reasonable. She would not have been on the show had she not been a porn actor. Personally, I have no problems with what she does. But we must certainly think about the way people with such profiles will impact young, impressionable minds. TV channels have a responsibility here,” Sinha argued.

The NCPCR representative on the BCCC will articulate the commission’s views in the next meeting, which the Council chairman Justice KL Shah, said would happen on December 23.