Across the film industry, the general feeling is Madama M’s oomph factor has had its run. The latest report on Mallika Sherawat’s downslide in Bollywood is that she has been dropped from the role of a Haryanvi woman that she was keenly looking forward to playing in debutant director Afzal Rizvi’s Lucky Unlucky.

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Says a source, “The film was to be shot in Punjab and Haryana in the winter of 2011. But Mallika’s dates were not available. Then the film’s leading man Sonu Sood got busy. Now after the fiasco that was her recent films Mallika is no longer seen as feasible to the project.”The alternateAfzal Rizvi who is the brother of the Peepli Live director Anusha Rizvi is apparently negotiating with, no, not Sunny Leone, but Yami Gautam for the film. And that leaves Mallika with just one Bollywood project KC Bokadia’s Dirty Politics where she plays a character based on the murdered nurse Bhanwari Devi. Barring Murder with which Mahesh and Mukesh Bhatt re-launched Mallika, the failure of  all of her films have proven her undoing in Bollywood. Even her erstwhile mentor Mahesh Bhatt agrees with that, “Sunny Leone is definitely the new sex symbol in tinsel town. Mallika needs to lock horns with her.”Sunny days not foreverA veteran industrywallah had this to say about Ms Leone’s acceptability factor among the Indian public, “Sunny is a short-term sex symbol. Privately she may have a larger fan-following than Mallika. But in public, fans would shy away beyond a point. The ‘porn’ tag limits Sunny’s potential. Besides Mallika can act! We need another sex symbol soon.”

Actor Sachiin Joshi says, “Sunny Leone has definitely taken over from Mallika. Sunny is a delight to deal with. As for the other one, the less said the better.”