It was one casting overthrow waiting to take place but that hasn’t been the case to be. For the ‘Vote Aapke Haath Mein Hai’ advertising campaign produced by Karan Johar for Dharma Productions, Katrina Kaif, John Abraham and Bipasha Basu and they were the nominees ones amongst a dozen odd other youth icons to partake in a particularly produced video. However, at the most recent moment, the trio couldn’t be a part of the video for diverse reasons and Tarun Mansukhani, director had to compete with other actors.

“That’s true. Earlier on John Abraham and Bipasha Basu were all set to be a part of this video that has been created to create consciousness around voting for our Government this election period. Even Katrina Kaif was finalized but in the ultimate scheme of things, we had to shoot the video without the three of them. Such a pity”, exclaims Tarun Mansukhani who has made a radical move from a colorful ‘Dostana’ to his current movement that has been shot in all Black & White. Now in shooting of this video, such stars are included like Abhishek Bachchan, Shahid Kapoor,  Ranbir Kapoor, Deepika Padukone Imran Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Farhan Akhtar, Asin, Ritiesh Deshmukh, , Sonam Kapoor and Karan Johar himself. So what actually went erroneous? What was the actual reason behind John, Bipasha and Katrina opting out of ‘Vote Aapke Haath Mein Hai’ which is written by Niranjan Iyengar, the writer who has written dialogues of the most famous movies of Karan Johar like ‘Kal Ho Naa Ho’ and ‘Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna’?

“If you are searching for any controversies then there aren’t any. In fact it wasn’t even the matter of anyone opting out”, Tarun is quick to react, “All three were quite sweet and were game to shoot for the video. But then on the day of the shoot, John and Katrina were not in the town due to which we had to go ahead without them.”

How about Bipasha?  “Well, her ‘Aa Dekhen Zara’ was being launched on the similar day when we had to shoot for the video. Other than that, she was also a slight stressed due to the multiplex problems. “’Aa Dekhen Zara’ was engulfed in this situation where no one was sure if it would eventually see an all India multiplex release or not. It was all right if Bipasha couldn’t shoot for the video in such a scenario.”

Though there have been allegations that his video, which carries the thump line of ‘Kuch Nahi Ho Sakta’, is an out- and-out copy of Hollywood’s ‘Don’t Vote’ commercial starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen DeGeneres, Jennifer Aniston, Forest Whitaker, Dustin Hoffman, Ashton Kutcher and will.i.am amongst others, Tarun is entirely untroubled. “I haven’t even seen the ‘Don’t Vote’ campaign and I don’t want to worry about that. The point at the end of the day is that the video has been liked and more than that the message is being rightly passed on to the youth.” All celebrities contributing for this cause has helped to develop a great consciousness around our right to cast vote and that’s what that matters at the end of the day”, announces Tarun.

This news report is written by Nabila Tanvir who is a freelance writer and researcher