Lalit Modi Had Inked A Rs 100 Crore Deal With Colors

The buzz is that ex-IPL Commissioner Lalit Modi had inked a Rs 100 crore deal with Colors channel for various entertainment programmes that would promote cricket, 12 months a year.

Apparently, Modi had even committed that top cricketers like Harbhajan Singh, S Sreesanth, Shane Warne, Yuvraj Singh, Brett Lee, Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir would be available for these shows.

For the first year, the channel had planned on 'After Party' coverage,IPL Awards, IPL Rockstar and Khatron Ke Khiladi IPL Special. Following objections from BCCI and even Team India captain, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the parties may not return in Season 4.

Khatron Ke Khiladi Season 3 is going ahead with models and actors instead of 13 cricketers as planned earlier after it was pointed out that a clause in the contracts of players, strictly followed by the International Cricket Council (ICC), prohibits them from participating in any activity that is life threatening.

Now IPL Rockstar, a music reality show that was shot inside the cricket stadiums with Kailash Kher, Sukhwinder Singh and Hard Kaur, has reportedly been canned.

When quized, the spokesperson for the channel insisted that the fate of the Endemol show was still "undecided" following the confusion over "contractual commitments".

The spokesperson added, "We have stopped expecting BCCI to endorse our projects planned around cricket. So right now, we've shifted our focus to big-ticket shows like India's Got Talent 2 and Bigg Boss Season Four."

Indian national anthem's spam email tweeted by many celebs

Former IPL chief Lalit Modi fell for it. So did TV host Mandira Bedi, singer Shreya Ghoshal, filmmaker Tarun Mansukhani and actors Uday Chopra and Sameera Reddy.

All these people, and several others on Monday celebrated on Twitter the naming of Jana Gana Mana as the "world's best national anthem" by the UNESCO. Only that it turned out to be a hoax. The news, which started doing the rounds through a spam email, was tweeted by many celebs. Both Modi and Mansukhani posted, "Proud to be Indian."

Modi soon rectified their mistake. "Told the unesco voting is a rumour. Nevertheless, I feel we have the best anthem," he said. Bedi, too, echoed, "I love my national anthem. It does deserve to be top of any list & if there has been no such poll to put us there, maybe there should be!"

While Reddy tried to check from her Twitter followers whether the news was true, Ghoshal apologised to hers on learning the truth. "It seems the national anthem thing is a hoax. Apologies to all."