SHACHI - not on valentine epi(article)

Ekta continues to be a tough taskmaster for her actors and most of them (barring the likes of Pulkit Samrat) continue to bow down to her wishes.

Recently, Ekta ordered her actors to pull out from Stat Plus' Valentine's Day special show, Salam-E-Ishq, at the last moment, leaving the channel in a soup.

Star Plus wanted almost all the lead actors of their main shows to be a part of this special show to be aired on February 14. However, the channel now has to make do with actors who don't belong to Balaji Telefilms. This means that Panchi Bohra, Ronit Roy, Gautami Gadgil and Shabbir Ahluwalia will certainly not be a part of Salam-E-Ishq.

Panchi said, "Yes, I was not allowed to participate in Salam-E-Ishq. But that's because, I have a major track coming up in Kayamath and the Balaji awards were also coinciding with the dates when we had to rehearse for Salam-E-Ishq."

However a source from the channel said, "Star Plus had asked Balaji to let their popular actors be a part of Salam-E-Ishq and everything had fallen in place. We wanted to depict various stages of love from our shows like Kyunki… and Kayamath. We had roped in Gautami Gadgil and Ronit Roy for the finale act, and Aamir Ali and Sanjeeda Shaikh were the anchors."

Our source added, "Suddenly, all the Balaji actors backed out. Gautami, Mouni Roy, Ronit, Panchi, Naman Shaw, Jay Bhanushali backed out without informing us. The production house prevented them from participating in the show. Hence, the concept went for a toss."

Naturally, the channel was in a tight spot as all the arrangements were already made. Left with no option, the channel approached Zee actors like Sharad Malhotra, Divyanka Tripathi, Hussain Kuwajerwala, Juhi Parmar and the anti-Ekta actor Pulkit Samrat for damage control.

It took seven days to shoot the event instead of three. Star Plus managed to pull it off, but their budget also went haywire. Hussain, who wasn't too confident about his performance, somehow salvaged the situation by doing the finale with Juhi. Rajat Tokas from Prithiviraj Chauhan was also called from Baroda to step in as one of the replacements.

Was Salam-E-Ishq originally supposed to be produced by Balaji as the buzz is, we asked? Our source said, "Equations between Balaji and Star Plus have changed, since the channel's management has changed to a large extent. Whatever be the situation earlier, Star has never made any promises to Ekta in recent times. This Valentine's Day show is produced by Wizcraft."

Finally, our source revealed the real reason about the rift between Ekta and Star Plus. He said, "Ekta's TV awards were supposed to be telecast on Star Plus and we had creative meetings too. From the ideation to the set, everything was approved. But the deal did not happen. Now, some other channel is telecasting it. If Ekta is livid with Star Plus, she should speak up and voice her displeasure."

Anupama Mandloi, programming head of Star Plus, was unavailable for comment. Ekta Kapoor did not respond to our calls and text messages

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