Salman only gives hints about what trends are going on with the audience. Shukla has more support than rashmi, which is why Salman always seems biased towards shukla. He’s actually just giving a hint that shukla is more popular outside. If he was biased towards shukla, why did he only praise asim over the sid vs asim fight? That was anti-shukla, because janta mostly supported asim. People said Salman is biased towards Sana, but after himanshi entered, he made it seem like sana was the bad one. Why? Because audience was mostly seeing sana in a negative light. He simply gives hints about how the janta feel about them.
Also he’s mean to mahira because majority janta does not like her and finds her annoying.