Star plus has announced to launch new family drama ‘ Viraasat - Nafrat Ke Khel Mein,Do Dilon Ki Chahat’, in its 9.00pm block June 12,2006 onwards, replaing Miilee.

It is the Production of B.R. Films Producation. This is a multi- starrer family drama that will have a strong line-up of television’s most popular faces ranging from Kiran Kumar, Deepak Quazir, Aman Verma, Amarr Upadhyay, Jayati Bhatia, Pooja Raval Ghai to Rohit Roy and Sangita Ghosh.

It is a story of Rahul Lamba (Rohit Roy) and Priyanka Kharbanda (Sangita Ghosh) who are frantically in love with each other, conversely are bound by an age old antagonism between their warring families. Will Rahul and Priyanka’s love be able to endure the offensive of this historic enmity or will it fall prey to i.

After Vaishnavi ended her life by hanging herself at her residence in Anna Nagar in Chennai now Shraddha Vishwanath has commited suicide. She was 21 a student of B.Sc Microbiology student. Shraddha was found hanged at her residence with fan in her room in Kotturpuram in Chennai.

In the suicide note she did not give any reason for taking such extreme step. She writes that - “I have been giving lot of trouble to you people. Please forgive me. I do not want to live in this world any more,” was all she said in the note.

She started her career in television with K. Balachander’s serial Edhir Neechal on Jaya TV. She acted with Khushboo in the serial Kalki on Jaya TV and Kolangal on Sun TV and also has a small role in the Tamil film Bose as one of Sneha’s four friends.

Jaya TV’s Vice president of programming Murali Raaman expressed shock and said, that Shraddha was a brave girl and a good actor. She used to be very lively on the sets. In fact, last month, when actress Vaishnavi committed suicide, she was very sympathetic, and even asked why people resorted to such extreme mea sures.”

In February this year television actor and model Kuljeet Randhawa committed suicide by hanging hanging herself from the ceiling fan of her Juhu apartment. Randhawa (29) left behind a two-page suicide note saying she was taking the drastic step since she couldn’t cope with life’s pressures.

Jaya TV operator Mavis Satcom Ltd. has been awarded the Wireless Protocol Clearance (WPC) to launch its news channel Jaya Plus. Jaya TV’s vice president of administration and legal S Ranganathan said that now they have obtained all the necessary permission to launch Jaya Plus. We have the infrastructure in place and the enrollment drive will be launched soon. The channel will be launched at the initial, after the Tamil Nadu assembly election results

For speeding up the proceedings, Mavis Satcom had approached the Madras High Court early this year. In February, the Centre had guaranteed the court that it would take a final conclusion on an application by VSNL to sanction it to receive and uplink Jaya Plus on or before 9 March.

Jaya Plus will be mostly the news and a current affairs channel, but will be having the undersized doses of talk shows and quiz programmes. The channel will have seven to eight news bulletins. Jaya Plus will be politically associated towards Jayalalitha.

DD Marathi channel Sahyadri has announced the winners of Navratna Awards. The awards honor’s the Maharashtrians, who have excelled in a particular field of interest. The Awards for this year will be presented to eleven prominent personalities in the field of music, films, drama, sports, social work, journalism, women, industrialist and literature.

The Godrej No.1 Sahyadri Awards would be presented to Ulhas Kashalkar for music, Amol Palekar for films, Mohan Wagh for drama, Sachin Tendulkar for sports, Ms Madakini and Prakash Amte for social work, Pratapsingh Jadhav for journalism. Ms Nasima Hurzul in the woman’s category. Ajit Gulabchand for industrialist and Mangesh Padgaonkar for literature.

The judges are, Chandrashekhar Dharmadhikari, Kiran Shantaram, Prabhakar Panshikar, Dr Prabha Atre, Madhukar Bhave, Ms Rupa Shah, V.V. Karmarkar, Vijaya Rajadhyaksha and Chandrakant Salunkhe.

Star Plus popular daily serial Miilee will soon come to an end as the leading lady Mona Wasu has refused to renew her contract that expires in March. The show will complete a year in March. However, after much bargaining, Mona has agreed to shoot for the soap till May-end.

Mona wants to leave the show because the hectic schedule of the show doesn’t leave time for herself. The show started as a weekly in April but keeping in mind its growing popularity it was turned into a daily and the protagonist Mona had to report to the sets every single day of the month.

The news has dismayed her co-stars who are like a huge family and even channel authorities are miffed. Producers cannot replace Mona, as she plays the central character. (more…)