Bigg Boss rejects leader, RPI men attack TV office

Party workers allege sectarian bias against Ramdas Athavale

Furious at their leader Ramdas Athavale being dropped from the reality show Bigg Boss-II, hundreds of Republican Party of India (RPI) workers on Tuesday ransacked the Colours television channel office and blocked the road outside.

The parliamentarian’s supporters barged into the office of the newly-opened channel in Andheri (east) and broke windowpanes, damaged furniture and fittings inside and outside its premises.

About 500 RPI workers staged a roadblock outside the office on the busy Andheri-Kurla road, which leads to the airport, and also burnt an effigy of actress Shilpa Shetty, the host of the show. Shetty had won Great Britain’s version of the show last year.

According to RPI’s Mumbai district president Vivek Pawar, the channel called
Athavale on August 16 and then suddenly rejected him without assigning any
reason. “We feel that he has been rejected mainly because he belongs to a scheduled caste,” Pawar said, alleging sectarian bias.

Two people have been arrested on charges of rioting, the Andheri police said.
Bigg Boss-II features a group of celebrities confined to a house for three months with no contact with the outside world.

The house has 32 cameras for a 24-hour surveillance, condensed into a one-hour episode for television.

Amongst the participants this time are politicians Sanjay Nirupam and Rahul Mahajan, son of late Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Pramod Mahajan, as well as gangster Abu Salem’s partner Monica Bedi.