Odisha outfits up in arms over vulgarity on reality TV

Odisha Sun Times Bureau
Bhubaneswar, May 8:

Odisha Samman Sangha, a self-styled cultural outfit, has decided to go all guns blazing against blatant vulgarity on reality TV shows on air in private TV channels of the state. It has threatened to wreak havoc at the audition sites of these soaps along with Bajrang Dal and some other organisations.

The issue started when a couple of teenage girls from Berhampur accused leading Odia actor Sritam Das and Debashis for inappropriately touching and verbally abusing them while they were auditioning for a reality TV program being judged by them.

In another such instance, the parents of a girl from Brahmapur’s Kamapali accused actor Debashis for touching her in the wrong places on the pretext of asking questions. The girl had to endure a lot of snide talk from her college mates after the footage was aired.

On many other occasions, judges like Sritam, Debashis and Bobby Mishra have been accused of misbehaving with the participants and lacking decent professional manners.

“The channels can edit the footage if they want. But they prefer to show it for better TRP. It affects the morale of rejected participants when the footage of their humiliation and rejection is aired,” said cine critic Dillip Hali.

Also, frequent hugging and kissing without an apparent justification for the same makes parents worried about sending their children to such shows.

While TV channels are happy to employ these not-so-successful-in-anything judges instead of senior artists for financial considerations, all that they manage to offer is a mimicked version of Hindi reality shows minus the quality, which irks the conservative TV viewership of the state.

“These shows are offending a highly cultured state like Odisha. We, along with Bajarang Dal and some other organisations are going to wreak havoc on the audition spot, should we see another such scene again,” said a member of Odisha Samman Sangha.