IT raids Balaji Telefilms

Tuesday 30 April 2013 8 am. Just another day at the Balaji Telefilms head office opposite Fun Cinemas in the Andheri West suburb of Mumbai. Normally, scores of aspirants from all over India come to its gates everyday and leave their photographs, their concepts, in the hope that the Queen of Indian television - slowly becoming the queen of Indian cinema will give them that elusive break. Which she has done over the past decade and build many an acting aspirant's, writer's and director's career. At least 200 young TV professionals buzzing with ideas go up the six story building, park themselves in their respective desks and plan the next big spike for the television shows Balaji delivers to TV channels everyday. But this morning was a little different. Posses of income tax officials - from the search and seizure department - reportedly stormed the Balaji head office, Krishna Bungalow in Juhu (where Ekta, Jeetendra Kapoor and Shobha Kapoor reside), brother Tusshar's home, apart from other locations. At the time of writing, the raids were reportedly still on and a press release/briefing was expected from Balaji Telefilms a little later in the day. All the locations in which raids were in progress - at the time of writing - were like fotresses with no one being allowed entry. And those who did get access had to hand over their phones. Ekta Kapoor and Balaji Telefilms have come even more into the limelight after she successfully launched her film banner Alt Entertainment and Balaji Films. With her slew of successful movies in her pocket (The Dirty Picture, Ek Thi Dayaan, Love Sex Aur Dokha, Ragini MMS), she was readying to release Shootout at Wadala on 3 May which is expected to do well at the box office. Reports are that the IT department believes it should have been paid more money as tax by Balaji than it did. Details were not available at the time of writing. "This could well be a case of the well-entrenched players in the Hindi film industry seeing Balaji Telefilms as a competitor who could threaten their fiefdom," says a veteran film industry critic. "It's like this: every time someone makes a dent in the entertainment industry either rivals or the government intervene to make life difficult for him or her. The current IT raid may well be in that space. Only time will tell us what it was all about." Tellychakkar.com will keep an eye on further developments.