A non-cooperation directive, a court challenge and a defence from Kangana Ranaut

The Federation of Western India Cine Employees has issued a non-cooperation directive against Ranveer Singh following his unceremonious exit from Farhan Akhtar's directorial Don 3. A directive of this kind is not a legal ban. It is an instruction to members that they decline to work on projects involving the actor, and it operates through the industry's collective bargaining structure rather than through any statute.

The distinction has been the subject of reporting this month, because it determines what happens next. Veteran producer T P Aggarwal moved court against the directive, which turns the question from an internal dispute into a legal one. The stakes behind it are commercial as well: Excel Entertainment, the company of Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani, has demanded ₹45 crore in damages from the actor, whose representatives say the body has no jurisdiction over the matter.

I've been banned so many times. Ranveer Singh should be happy he's reached a status that has so many enemies now.

A dispute inside a body that usually presents a united front

Federations of cinema workers have historically closed ranks around their own leadership and, in most major disputes, around their own industry. A non-cooperation directive aimed at a working actor is unusual in that it puts an employer and a labour body on the same side of a conflict between a producer and a director. That is what makes the court challenge more than a personal grievance.

• The directive was issued by the Federation of Western India Cine Employees.
• The stated trigger: Ranveer Singh's exit from Don 3.
• The body asked its members not to collaborate with him until he appears before it in person.
• Producer T P Aggarwal has challenged it in court; Excel Entertainment has demanded ₹45 crore.
• Kangana Ranaut, who has never been banned by the body, commented at a Mumbai trailer launch.

Ranaut's remarks are worth reading for what they assume. She framed the directive as evidence that an actor has arrived, on the reasoning that trade bodies only act against people whose standing justifies the fight. It is a generous reading of the mechanism, and one that the women in the same industry — who have more often been the targets of such directives than the beneficiaries — would not necessarily share.