Mentors refuse regional winners to 'Sa Re Ga Ma Pa'

Thursday, June 28, 2007

Recently in the show 'Sa Re Ga Ma Pa 2007', winners of Bangla and Marathi version of the show Anik Dhar and Abhijeet Kosambi respectively were denied entry by the mentors Himesh and Ismail Darbar. They said that the participants of this year's 'Sa Re Ga Ma Pa' have worked so hard to be in the 'Agnipareeksha' round and this kind of arrangement is not acceptable. Ismail even denied to listen to Anik and Abhijeet even once. The regional winners were reportedly very upset on not being allowed to perform. When Abhijeet Kosambi of Kohlapur was contacted, he said, "Everything is fine now and we both are now allowed to perform in the 'Brahmshastra' round". He added, "It was declared during the finals of Marathi and Bengali version that we will be included in top fourteen. Well, the judges did not know this and so, they were against our entry".

It is a little hard to understand that despite being announced before, the judges didn't know about it or the channel deliberately didn't inform the mentors about their inclusion. Even Himesh was on his insulting best behaviour and blasted, "Now that Marathi and Bengali winners have been given entry, why don't we give entries to entries to Telugu, Gujarati and Punjabi winners as well?"

Poor contestants were very upset over the judges' behaviour, as they were given entry because of the performances in their regional format of the show. It seems to be the fault of the channel for not conveying it to the mentors or their deliberate effort to create a controversy, as including a contestant is not a small issue and the judges should have been informed .

When one of the mentors Ismail Darbar was quizzed on this to why they objected their inclusion in the show, he said, "Like all the other participants they should have been in the show from the beginning for fair competition". When we told him that the contestants were told about this during the finals of regional format, he said, "I had no idea and I was not informed by the channel".

What do we say on this? The channel is surprising the judges as well as us.