Maayka grinds to a halt

Zee’s primetime show Maayka is facing major roadblocks. The shooting of the show is on hold since the past few days as the director Santosh Bhatt has lodged a complaint against Sangamitra, Creative Director of the show at the Federation of Western India Cine Employees. Santosh is aggrieved as he has been replaced in the show without any prior notice. An actor from the show says, “Maayka’s shoot is suffering big time these days. Today the shoot was held up for several hours. Santosh Bhatt who was directing the show earlier has sued the Creative Director. Henceforth, whosoever comes to direct the show gets a call from the federation. Today the shoot was held up due to the rains and then the federation guys came on the sets and did not allow us to shoot.” When contacted Santosh refused to comment and asked us to get in touch with the federation. Balwinder Singh, Administrative Secretary of the Association said, “The complaint is against the Creative Director Sangamitra. She has been harassing our directors by falsely using the name of the channel and replacing them as per her wish. Four of the directors who were arbitrarily removed by Sangamitra namely Santosh Bhatt, Rakesh Jaggi, Manish Khandelwal, Javed Sayyed have signed in support of Santosh.” Stating further he adds, “I had called up Sangamitra personally but she did not pay any heed. Now we have stopped the shooting as she had been encroaching upon the rights of a director. There have been many replacements on the show because of her. Now Creative Eye (the production house) is trying to solve the matter and have assured us that things would get sorted out as soon as possible. Ours is a strong association of more than 4,000 members and we stand by each and everyone.” Where Sangamitra remained unavailable, producer Dheeraj Kumar said that he was busy in a meeting.