Hindi
Single screen saab
MUMBAI: Anil Sharma’s Singh Saab The Great may as well have been a Punjabi film: much of the dialogue and songs are in Punjabi. This follows a week after Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s almost-Gujarati Ram-Leela, which had dialogue with Gujarati blend and just about every song and background songs taken from Gujarati folk music. If this is these makers’ idea of being different, they are succeeding only in limiting their audience. As for the rest, Sharma tries to cash in on Sunny Deol’s “dhai kilo haath” which now, with time, weighs three and half kilos, which he uses to take on hundreds of goons let loose on him by the villain, Prakash Raj. It is a simple story: Sunny is an honest government servant and Prakash Raj is a despotic evil man. Take it or leave it.
Sunny Deol is a Sikh gentleman who descends on village after village and town after town to cleanse them of villains, corruption and other such evils. But one day a journalist, Amrita Rao, barges into his office and starts accusing him of hiding from the law in the guise of a Sardar without having completed his 18 year jail sentence, which he was given along with five of his colleagues. That is the cue; you know a flashback is coming. So Sunny, who usually flares up with fury at the slightest provocation, goes soft on this TV reporter and decides to tell her all.
Sunny is the usual oft-transferred collector who is posted to a town where Prakash’s writ runs large, unchallenged. Because like all such bad men of recent era, he controls enough MLAs and MPs to topple the local government! However, Sunny turns out to be a tough ‘un-government-servant’ kind of guy. While he is dispatching Prakash off with disdain, the latter dares to threaten to harm his sister, meriting a resounding slap from Sunny. That is reason enough for Prakash not to use his clout and get Sunny transferred of town but to let him be and use his guile to harm him and his family on a regular basis. Guile is something Sunny’s brawn is no match for.
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Producer: Anuj Sharma, Sangeeta Ahir. |
The problem is that the fear of the villain vanishes in the very first encounter between the two, when Sunny slaps him. Whatever a writer or director does to resurrect his villainous nature after that does not help: he can have hundreds of his goons kill women or harass them to teach Sunny a lesson but he does not seem threatening. A villain has to be built till the end, preferably larger than the hero so that as much as the hero, even the viewer wants him punished! But if a maker has not learnt that in over three decades in filmmaking, it is too late.
The film is a poorly conceived and executed and any claims (though it may read so in the titles) to story, screenplay and direction are not substantiated. Just filling up frames with crowds does not make an extravaganza. And what is with all the Punjabi dialogue and music? Who are they catering to—even Punjabi films have come of age and rate much better than Singh Saab The Great.(Not to mention they cost much less.) Music, even if Punjabi, is routine. Editing and photography both look uninspired. Action has been seen alike in many South remakes recently.
Sunny Deol plays himself, the character he has been playing since his debut; mostly looking angry and trading punches. Amrita Rao’s fascination for the widower Sunny is rather too cliché. Urvashi Rautela as a many years younger wife leaves no mark. Prakash Raj matches Sunny in his consistency at villainy since his Hindi debut; the least he could do is vary his expressions.
Singh Saab The Great, is an old fashioned mass film with appeal for single screen patrons with its best prospects being in the North.
Hindi
India’s telecom subscribers cross 1.32 billion in February 2026
Broadband base swells past 1.06 billion as Jio and Airtel tighten grip on the market.
MUMBAI: India’s telecom sector is ringing in steady growth once again adding millions of new connections every month while the race for broadband supremacy continues to heat up like a fiercely contested cricket match. According to the latest data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on 1 April 2026, the total telephone subscriber base in the country reached 1,321.31 million at the end of February 2026. This marked a net addition of 7.31 million subscribers during the month, translating into a monthly growth rate of 0.56 per cent.
Wireless subscribers (including mobile and Fixed Wireless Access) stood at 1,273.31 million, registering a net addition of 6.97 million and a growth rate of 0.55 per cent. Within this, urban wireless connections grew to 730.75 million (growth 0.70 per cent), while rural wireless subscribers reached 542.56 million (growth 0.35 per cent).
Wireline subscribers, though much smaller in scale, showed slightly faster growth. The total wireline base increased to 47.99 million, with a net addition of 0.34 million and a monthly growth rate of 0.70 per cent. Urban areas continued to dominate wireline connections with a share of 89.41 per cent.
Overall tele-density in India improved to 92.66 per cent. Urban tele-density stood at 150.68 per cent, while rural tele-density edged up to 60.02 per cent.
The broadband subscriber base crossed a significant milestone, reaching 1,059.05 million at the end of February 2026. This reflected a healthy net addition of 6.33 million subscribers and a monthly growth rate of 0.60 per cent from January’s figure of 1,052.72 million.
Segment-wise, mobile wireless access continued to drive the majority of growth with 996.52 million subscribers. Fixed Wireless Access (including 5G FWA) added 16.51 million, while wired broadband stood at 46.02 million.
Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. maintained its commanding lead with 519.64 million broadband subscribers. Bharti Airtel Ltd. followed with 364.14 million, Vodafone Idea Ltd. with 129.36 million, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. with 28.70 million, and Atria Convergence Technologies Ltd. with 2.38 million.
Together, these top five players command a massive 98.60 per cent share of the total broadband market.
In the wireless (mobile) segment, private operators continued to dominate with 92.59 per cent market share, leaving public sector undertakings (BSNL and MTNL) with just 7.41 per cent.
Out of the total 1,257.29 million wireless (mobile) subscribers, 1,177.60 million were active on the peak Visitor Location Register (VLR) date, representing an impressive 93.66 per cent activity rate. Bharti Airtel led in this metric with 99.42 per cent of its subscribers active.
Meanwhile, 14.47 million subscribers submitted requests for Mobile Number Portability (MNP) in February, indicating healthy competition and customer churn across zones.
While urban areas still lead in absolute numbers, rural connectivity is slowly catching up. Rural wireless tele-density stood at 59.46 per cent, compared with the much higher urban figure of 142.32 per cent.
Fixed Wireless Access using 5G technology also showed promising traction, growing to 11.93 million subscribers. Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel are the primary players driving this segment.
The data paints a picture of a maturing yet still rapidly expanding telecom ecosystem. With total telephone subscribers now well past the 1.32 billion mark and broadband users comfortably above 1.06 billion, India continues to solidify its position as one of the world’s largest and most dynamic digital markets.
From bustling city streets to remote villages, more Indians are staying connected than ever before proving that when it comes to telecom, the country’s appetite for growth shows no signs of hanging up anytime soon.
