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Veteran social activist Anna Hazare developed cold feet and failed
to turn up for the shooting of the Priya Tendulkar show at Nanavati
Auditorium yesterday. He was one of the panelists on the show's
episode on corruption along with the deputy chief minister of
Maharashtra, Mr. Gopinath Munde, and the former union minister of
state, Mr. Rajesh Pilot.
"The crusader against corruption has failed to keep up his
promise," a visibly upset Ms. Tendulkar told the audience before
the start of the show. She also kept a chair at the stage empty as
a protest and declared it so.
However, Mr. Pilot also did not make it to the show, excusing him
self at the last minute on account of "Political" emergency in
Delhi. The only invitee to be present at the show was Mr. Munde,
who fielded the audience's probing queries on corruption with
confidence.
The Tendulkars, Priya and father Vijay, the anchorperson of the
show, had quick replacements for the prominent absentee duo, Mr.
Hazare and Mr. Pilot. They roped in the editor of the Hindi daily
'Navbharat Times', Mr. Vishwanath Sachdev, and Mr. Madhav
Deshpande, one of the founder-members of the Shiv Sena and the
party boss, Mr. Bal Thackeray's bete noir, to give company to the
high-profile deputy chief minister.
The show, a 45-minute weekly affair, is slated to be telecast on
STAR TV from tomorrow. The episode on corruption shot yesterday,
according to Ms. Tendulkar, is scheduled to go on air on February
16. The inaugural episode of the talk show to be . shown tomorrow
consists of a curtain raiser. Interestingly, this would include
glimpses of the controversial Kini episode which Ms. Tendulkar had
shot earlier for her talk show on Doordarshan.
To recall, the episode was dropped by the DD authorities without
assigning any reason, which led Ms. Tendulkar to take the entire
show off the national channel late last year.
Talking to this newspaper, the Tendulkars lambasted Mr. Hazare for
failing to keep up his commitment. "We contacted him a month in
advance and he confirmed the date about 18 days ago. But just this
very morning, Mrs. Pushpa Bhave called us up and said Mr. Hazare
will not be able to make it due to health reasons," said Ms. Priya
Tendulkar.
However, according to Mrs. Bhave, the social worker could not turn
up for the show as he got a slip disc attack early yesterday
morning. "He was in Pune with Baba Adhav and just as he was
planning to leave for Mumbai, he got the attack. He phoned me up
immediately and asked to convey this to the Tendulkars, which I
did," she said, adding that he got the attack because of hectic
travelling all these days.
The shooting was a delight to watch as Ms. Tendulkar in her
characteristic articulate and satirical style, got the audience
involved in the debate on what is unquestionably the most serious
issue facing the nation today; corruption in high places.
Mr. Sachdev and Mr. Deshpande were occasionally solicited to
interrupt in what turned out to be a verbal assault on Mr. Munde.
"When in opposition, you had promised to book Dawood Ibrahim within
100 days of coming into power. It is close to two years now and you
have done nothing, absolutely nothing," was one of the questions.
Mr. Munde also faced a volley of questions on Enron, party funds
and crime. Luckily for him though, no one in the otherwise
enlightened yet angered audience questioned Mr. Munde on the Barkha
row.
Those present in the galleries also included the Juneja family from
Versova. They reiterated their allegation that Jaidev Thackeray's
men had entered their flat, a rented one, and bashed them up trying
to oust them at the behest of the owners. They charged the D. N.
Nagar police of conniving with the landlord of that flat and
harassing them at his behest.
"Nobody is above the law. You come and meet me in my office on
Wednesday," said Mr. Munde to the distraught family. The show thus
went on with remarks from a senior scribe present on corruption
rampant in the journalistic world itself.
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