Bhubaneswar: A senior BJP leader of Odisha today joined the ongoing ‘Padmavati’ row by saying the filmmakers should not “distort” history and stop showing Rani Padmini, the central character of the film, in a bad light.

“The Rajput community had been worshipping Rani Padmavati as Goddess and moreover, the Rajput’s faith and pride has been associated the Queen. Therefore, nobody has the right to play with the history,” said State BJP leader Kanak Vardhan Singh Deo, who owes his lineage to the Chauhan Rajputs.

Meanwhile, there are many who slammed the protestors by saying how some people are so confident about the content of the film without watching it.

“We are yet to watch the complete film (Padmavati) but it’s really unfortunate that some people had created a controversy only out of their imagination that there is a wrongful portrayal of certain facts,” said columnist Kedar Mishra.

Earlier in the day, the release of Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s epic-drama has been deferred according to a spokesperson of the film’s producer and distributor Viacom18 Motion Pictures.

The film has been mired in controversy over conjectures that it "distorts history" regarding Rajput queen Padmavati, a contention that Bhansali has repeatedly denied.

Some Hindu groups have been protesting against the movie's release while some political outfits have demanded that its release be deferred in view of the Gujarat Assembly elections.

The makers have also not got a clearance yet from the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), which said the application from the makers was "incomplete".