Celebrity couple Shweta Kawatra and Manav Gohli, participants of STAR One's dance show "Nach Baliye
2", have been accused of buying 200 SIM cards and distributing it among friends to get maximum
votes.
According to media reports, the alleged foul play came to light while the Thane police were investigating
another complaint. The police said the couple bought 200 SIM cards in someone else's name and
distributed them among quite a few people.
Shweta and Manav were not available for comment and STAR One too remained tight-lipped over the
issue.
But their colleague Hiten Tejwani came to their defence and said: "It is not written anywhere that you can't
vote for yourself. I don't know how far these allegations are true so I'm not in a position to say anything. But
when I heard it, I was not shocked because votes are needed to win.
Hiten and his partner Gauri, who are also participants of the show, did not attach too much importance to
winning.
"As far as we are concerned, we never thought we have to win - we were not good dancers so we are happy
with the fact that we learnt dancing. We were comfortable with acting but had lots of inhibitions about
dancing but slowly learnt it and we are happy."
However, this is not the first time that a reality show has been dogged by controversy.
Sony's "Indian Idol" was accused of tampering with the results. Some of the participants of "Nach Baliye"
(part one) were also alleged to have misused the voting techniques.
Friday, October 27, 2006 12:50 IST