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| Pakistan orders Amitabh Bachchan off billboards | | | B L KAK
NEW DELHI, AUG. 11: New flash from Karachi, Pakistan's financial capital: Billboards showing Indian film icon, Amitabh Bachchan, have been ordered to be removed imediately. Authorites in Karachi issued the order on Friday.
Billboards were showing Amitabh Bachchan in front of Pakistan's national flag. These billboards, reports received inj Delhi this afternoon, were meant to promote a television quiz show opening on Pakistan's Independence Day, August 14.
Mirza Asif Baig, a Karachi-based government official was quoted as saying: “We are not enemies of Amitabh Bachchan. But his picture on our national flag was an objectionable act and we ordered them to remove his picture from the flag". Baig pronounced: “This place is reserved only for our own heroes".
Telefun, a private call-in entertainment company, had posted the giant billboards round the Karachi city to promote a quiz show along the lines of an Indian version of the US quiz show ”Who Wants To Be A Millionaire” hosted by Bachchan. The billboards said the show would be aired from August 14 -- the day Pakistan celebrates independence from Britain and partition from India.
Telefun's marketing manager, Abdul Qadir, was quoted as saying: "The company is complying with the authorites' directive". He was reported to have stated in a media interview: “We have already started disassociating Bachchan’s picture from the national flag". “It was a mistake", Abdul Qadir admitted. Qadir said Telefun had used Bachchan’s image because of the similar format of the programme in the two countries.
Amitabh Bachchan is regarded as the most famous living Indian movie star and is popular on both sides of the border, although there is a long-standing ban on screening of Indian films in cinema halls in Pakistan.
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