While many film celebrities of Bollywood willingly postponed their travel to Tampa Bay in order to vote, there are celebs who rushed early for the pre award formalities of IIFA 2014 and had to miss voting for Lok Sabha Elections in the country. These actors cited prior commitment to attend IIFA as an excuse to miss voting.
Actors like Priyanka Chopra, Hrithik Roshan, Saif Ali Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Anil Kapoor, Madhuri Dixit Nene, Sonakshi Sinha, Shahid Kapoor, Bipasha Basu, Abhay Deol and Vivek Oberoi, who earlier spoke about the importance of voting, skipped the day for fun yonder. Actress Deepika Padukone, Malaika Arora, Kalki Koechlin and Yami Gautam are few others who took off early to Florida to concentrate on the event.
IIFA director Sabbas Joseph made a statement to this effect, reasoning out the act of the stars – “Commitments and announcement of the IIFA dates were made many months before the ballot date for Mumbai residents was announced. Contracts were signed and announcements made… Once the show is advertised, it cannot be cancelled or postponed… (it) would cause unimaginable losses.”
Actors make a tremendous impact on the audience, both reel and real. It is one thing to keep up the end of the bargain, and quite another to give it a miss. The overall voting percentage of Mumbai plummeted badly as compared to Chennai yesterday, sending hate waves with people.
It remains to be seen how the poling goes on in the rest of the country.
