The extremely popular ongoing Indian Idol show saw Amit Kumar, son of the legendary singer the Late Kishor Kumar, as a special judge in a recent episode of a Kishore Kumar special.
The show is now drawing very close to its finale with the top 9 contestants vying for the coveted Indian Idol 12 trophy. The contestants are – Arunita Kajjilal, Ashish Kulkarni, Sayali Kamble, Anjali Gaikwad, Shanmukh Priya, Nihal Taro, Sawai Bhatt, Mohammad Danish and Pawandeep Rajan.
During the show, there were 100 songs sung over two episodes as a homage and tribute to the maestro Kishore Kumar. Amit Kumar was seen enjoying the show even narrating anecdotes about a few songs related to his father and had an engaged audience and participants’ attention while he was narrating those titbits. He was seen praising the participants and even gifting a watch by taking it off from his hand and giving it to contestant Pawandeep. He said that the watch was gifted to him by his father and he was so impressed with Pawan deep’s performance that he was now gifting it to him. It now seems that all this was scripted and Amit Kumar was told to praise each contestant lavishly, despite their performance if it was not up to the mark. Amit Kumar disclosed this in a media interview and said he was told to praise every contestant so he was merely honoring his commitment. However, he was so upset with the performances of the contestants that he wanted to stop the show midway. Most of the viewers too expressed their disappointment. They even criticized the singing of the judges Anu Malik and Neha Kakkar and said all the judges were praising the performances which left much to be desired and was in fact much below average. They felt it was not a befitting tribute to Kishore Kumar.
Aditya Narayan however who is back and currently hosting the show after recovering from a bout of COVID -19 sprang to the defense of the contestants and said that there were a lot of COVID-19 restrictions in place which prevented devoting enough time to rehearsals and practices and the location had also shifted to Daman. He said that the team of Indian Idol 12 was working dedicatedly to ensure that shooting continued amidst these trying situations and new episodes are produced for the audience instead of organizing re-runs of their previous shows as is being done by most of the serials and TV shows
