MUMBAI: Has walking out of female leads in title roles become a recurring problem for Sony Entertainment Television? After Nausheen Ali Sardar kicked Kkusum, yet another female lead in the title role has done the same. Sakshi Tanwar who plays the title role in Sony’s mytho-socio drama Devi has quit the serial.

Indiantelevision.com had got the buzz (Read Telly Chakkar, May 15) that Tanwar was locked up and ready to move out and had quizzed her about the same. But Tanwar had just laughed it off and said, “No comments. I will speak about this at the right time.” However, now it’s official!

When contacted today morning, she said, “Yes, finally it has happened. But I wouldn’t like to go into the details and make a big issue of this,” she replied gracefully, adding, “It was a mutual decision between the production house and the channel. The parting was amicablle.”

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It may be recalled that even when Ekta Kapoor created an interesting turn of events (identity crisis between Parvati Aggarwal and Swati Dixit) in Kahaanii Ghar Ghar Kii recently, Tanwar chose to keep a very low profile.

The buzz doing the rounds is that Tanwar was unhappy with the way show was shaping up. She wanted the show to focus on her original character of Gayatri, the housewife. She did not want to be portrayed as a goddess and an incarnation of Durga. There was too much focus on magical and divine powers which had converted the whole story into a directionless facade, she thought. This all had increased after Aman Varma had stepped in and the show timings had been extended to an hour, when Henna reached the last page of its book.

Juhi Parmar, who plays the title role in Star Plus’s afternoon soap Kumkum – Ek Pyara Sa Bandhan (which is rocking at the moment), has stepped into Tanwar’s sandals.

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Parmar, who was shooting in Raigad for the show, is back in Mumbai. The buzz is that Parmar will make her entry as Kalika and the character of Devi will be phased out.

Speaking to indiantelevision.com this morning, Parmar was pretty tight-lipped. All she would say, “I have started shooting for Devi. Sony is planning a great entry for me. I am sorry but I have been strictly told not to open my mouth on the details of my character. Give me a week’s time before I tell you about it.”

Devi, produced by Ajay Devgan and Misha Gautam, lately changed hands in direction department too. Not so long ago, when Aman Varma entered and the focus shifted to ‘jaado vaado’, the well acclaimed Anant Mahadevan who was holding the reins gave way to Ravi.

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