Hi Rato Bhaley, Thanks for ur post. To be honest, I don't read much into his wanting to speaking Nepali. However, I agree that this act has indeed tapped Nepali ego and misplaced nationalism. I too think that his focus is more towards the voting mechanism than on singing and that could be fatal. Based on a particular community's vote, he certainly cannot hope to win this contest...somebody please tell him that HE NEEDS TO PERFORM. Yes, he is an Indian by all means. This is precisely what he forgot while talking in Nepali and projecting himself as one. And this could backfire as the non-Nepalese speaking Indians might just look at it as a very communal thing. In contrast, look at Amit Paul (notwithstanding his tremendous singing capability), he has been able to present him in a more cosmopolitan matter...singing in a number of Indian languages, including Nepali. In all these months on Indian Idol...only once did he speak in Bangla (language for Bengalis) when he was to dedicate a song to his grandmother...the last episode i guess, 'gustakh dil....' Perhaps, I don't have answers to all ur questions or maybe I don't want to answer them but I must say, they are all very valid questions and hope somebody will definitely send replies to them. In the end, since talent is what we are talking about...LET THE BEST MAN WIN!!! Well, now....that's anybody's guess! Thanks. Also, I dont' mean to offend anybody, please!!
Darjeeling, Sept. 9: Mobile recharge cards in pockets and nimble fingers on their phones, Prashant Tamang’s fans are gearing up for one last push that will make their hero an Idol.
But not sure if that will be enough, they want Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to campaign for the Calcutta police constable.
The man from the hills has made it to the last two of Indian Idol, the talent hunt show. It is now a straight fight with Amit Paul of Shillong.
“The chief minister of Meghalaya has asked the people to vote for Amit. He has even been made the state’s brand ambassador. Now we expect the chief minister of Bengal and his cabinet to drum up support for Tamang. After all he is the pride of the state,†said Tenzing Khambachay, a ward commissioner of Darjeeling municipality.
Sikkim chief minister Pawan Chamling has endeared himself to the people here by coming out in Tamang’s support.
Amit got more votes than Prashant in the last round. To make sure that it did not happen again, a new Prashant Fan Club was formed in Darjeeling today.
Bimal Gurung, a GNLF leader who heads the club, apparently stayed awake on Friday night to text votes worth Rs 1.5 lakh.
Residents of Rink Mall have opened three coin booths and will set up another seven to help those who do not want to burn holes in their pocket.
Coin booths, sponsored by local clubs or individuals, are coming up in Jorebunglow, Pokhriabong, Sukhiapokhri, Mirik, Kurseong, Kalimpong and other places for the showdown next weekend.
“We are meeting tomorrow to finalise the plans,†Khambachay said.
The club has requested service providers to ensure that votes sent from across the hills reach their destination.
As soon as the results were declared around 10pm yesterday, hundreds of people from across the hills took to the streets and the party continued past midnight.
SMS NEWS to 58888 for latest updates Enthusiasm has gripped lakhs from Shillong and Darjeeling to get Amit Paul or Prashant Tamang voted as India's next singing sensation.
Sikkim CM Pawan Chamling was quoted in Himalaya Darpan, a local daily, on Tuesday as saying he'll do "much more than any government" to see Tamang, a fellow Nepali, beat the competition. Immediately after the CM's announcement, Anant Rai, a businessman in Gangtok, announced he'll give Rs 1 crore to fund the Darjeeling singer's campaign. Nearly 10,000 students came out in a raucous procession in neighbouring Kurseong on Wednesday chanting "win-Prashant" slogans.
Asked if cadres of Gorkha National Liberation Front and sundry other outfits which fought a bitter war in the 80s against the West Bengal government for Gorkhaland are putting pressure, as alleged by some, on residents to support Prashant, the secretary of the singer's fan club in Kurseong, Pradip Pradhan, said, "Everyone is doing it on their own. The allegations are baseless. Instead, we hear from outsiders settled in Meghalaya that they are being threatened with expulsion if they don't vote for Amit."
But Pradhan agreed that the Darjeeling hills are afire. " Pahad ma aago laage ko cha (The mountains are raging)," he said from Kurseong, the small town that quietly nestled between Siliguri and Darjeeling until Prashant, a village boy from Tung Sung tea estate who's now a constable in the Calcutta Police, reached the final of the show. Now the place, known for little more than the mushroom-like sprouting of its English schools, is throbbing with feverish anticipation and tension.
Ten lakh SMSs in support of the local singer, for about Rs 30 lakh, have gone into the "mission", Pradhan added. "Each house, each family is visited for votes," he said, "and each contributes, anything between Rs 100 to Rs 1,000. The rich are giving more though we are a poor people."
The Amit Paul fever in India's north-eastern states is equally scalding. Even as Lapang reminded the singer of the laurels Kapil Dev brought to India and said he had similar expectations, Purno Sangma, the former Lok Sabha Speaker, said, "Amit has already created history. He is the pride of Meghalaya and the whole of Northeast. We are proud of him and I personally appeal to all citizens of Meghalaya and Northeast to vote for Amit generously and make him the next Indian Idol."
Everybody, regardless of political affinity, is pitching in. Laban MLA Jopsimon Phanbuh has donated three PCOs for the purpose of free voting. Meghalaya urban affairs minister Paul Lyngdoh has given out three, Mawlai MLA PT Sawkmie 20 and Pynthorumkhrah MLA AL Hek five.
In all this frenzy, what binds the people of the two regions in their latest obsession to "win" is the distinct awareness of being an alien in their own country. Debojit Saha, a former Voice of India winner from Assam, summed up the sentiment when he said, "Amit Paul and I are both from the Northeast, a region hardly known to the outside world. We know what hurdles we have crossed to reach our desired destinations."
The hills of Meghalaya and Darjeeling are on fire again. And this time it is the microphone and not the gun that has swept lakhs into hysteria.
At the centre of this mass mania are two youngsters from Shillong and Darjeeling who have crooned their way to the top of Indian Idol, a singing competition hosted by a TV channel, fuelling a desperation in these two hill cities for a truly national youth icon — perhaps for the first time in their insurgency-riddled histories.
Perfectly sober people, including senior bureaucrats and ministers, are doing bizarre things to get either Amit Paul from Shillong or Prashant Tamang from Darjeeling voted as India's next singing sensation.
Announcements are being made during football matches, marriage ceremonies and birthday parties to see either of the two singers through. Some ministers are exhorting voters to send SMSs in favour of their favourite crooner; others have booked PCOs for the job.
Even former militants are allegedly browbeating residents to vote for the local star.
Paul was recently anointed the "brand ambassador of Meghalaya for peace, communal harmony and excellence" by chief minister DD Lapang
Statesman News Service SILIGURI, Sept. 12: Come Friday and the nation would get a new idol to ogle at courtesy the Indian Idol show being run by a television channel. The competition is on its last leg with the last two contestants Prashant Tamang and Amit Paul on the fray. Whatever be the outcome, the champion would, however, have a Darjeeling district connection. While Prashant is from Darjeeling, the other finalist Amit Paul has close bonds with Siliguri. This foot hill town is where Amit's ancestral house is. "Though Amit was born in Shillong, Meghalaya, his childhood was mostly spent in Siliguri. He has performed in many shows here and still continues to visit Siliguri as before," claimed Amit's unlce Mr Ashok Paul. According to him, Amit went to the audition in Kolkata from their house at Dabgram in Siliguri. There is another common element between Prashant and Amit. Neither have had any formal training on music. The common link, however, ends here. While there is a lot of commotion and tension in the whole of Darjeeling hills and in the adjacent state of Sikkim over Prashant's prospects in the show, Siliguri is rather cold about Amit's prospects. Amit had given up his studies to pursue his passion. When the chance to participate in Indian Idol came along, he thought it was godsend. But his dreams seemed to be in danger of dying even before they matured. He was voted out early in the show. But he got a second lease of life through a wild card entry. And there has been no looking back since. This perfectionist is now in the finals. Prashant, on the other hand, is employed with the Kolkata police. He is the first from his community to take part in the event. His fans were so enthusiastic in voting for him that, except in the last edition, he was never sent to the danger zone. Negative comments from the judges spurred him to do better. Now he has proven his worth and he is in the Top Two.
Reality TV shows text SMS revenue earnings for telcos 13 Sep, 2007, 0507 hrs IST,Kalyan Parbat & Ashoke Nag, TNN
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KOLKATA: With an average 1.5 billion SMSes generated nationally every week, the Indian SMS saga is already the stuff of legend. If anything, the marriage of reality TV shows and mobile telephony now promises to set the national SMS turf on fire. Check this out — an 11-hour voting window (between 9 pm and 8 am) during last Friday’s Gala Round in Sony Entertainment TV India’s popular Indian Idol 3 music contest raked in well over three million SMSes from across India and key overseas locations like London, Dubai and Singapore. This was confirmed by a senior SET India official.
But here’s the juicy bit. The unofficial number doing the rounds is that at least five million votes hit Sony’s SMS gateway. Neither SET India nor the mobile guys are willing to confirm this. But at a flat Rs 3 per message, the SMS revenue alone during that 11-hour voting slot would work out to a cool Rs 1.5 crore. Add to that revenues from a few million voice message votes at Rs 6 each which also hit home. SET India circles confirmed that “bulk of the SMS traffic stemmed from Hutch and Airtel networksâ€.
Top honchos at SET India are truly gung-ho. “The total SMS-driven voting levels during the September 7 Gala episode itself was far in excess of three million. And these SMS votes came in just 11-hour voting window. Now that we’re down to the wire and people have to make a choice between the two finalists, Amit Paul and Prashant Tamang, I anticipate SMS-based voting to be 8-to-10 times the three million-plus SMS levels scaled last Friday. This is since the voting will be spread over two weeks till the Grand Finale on September 23,†said Mr Albert Almeida, who is executive vice-president and business head at SET India.
ET also spoke to a cross-section of the mobile flock, including Hutch, Airtel and BSNL, to get a fix on the real SMS impact of Indian Idol 3. While there’s a tight lid on all Indian Idol-related SMS numbers, leading mobile operators confirmed that SMS volumes were huge. It’s a different matter that SMS data trickling in from mobile operators tended to be more conservative than SET India’s projections.
Even as Indian Idol 3 hits the final stage, mobility circles expect voting lines to nationally generate five million SMSes in the final stretch from September 14-to-23 which will see several face-offs between the two finalists — Shillong’s Amit Paul and city cop, Prashant Tamang. For instance, a director at one of the country’s biggest cellular service providers said: “The two-and-a-half month long Indian Idol 3 context is likely to generate a shade over 15 million SMSes nationally, which is huge for a single TV show, but merely a drop in India’s SMS ocean, given that the national mobile market generates over 1.5 billion SMSes every week. In ARPU (average revenue per user) terms the increase will be a tiny 10 paise in gross revenue terms for mobile operators
I don't think we the nepalis have enough money to compete with indians. There are many millionaires and billionaires in india. Hopefully, indians haven't heard the news that someone gave 1 core for Prashant's otherwise it will fuel amit's fans and beat us in fund raising. So, please keep the fund raising secret. Even someone wants to write please post in nepali script so that indians cannot understand.
WHY WAS PRASHANT IN DANGER ZONE LAST WEEK Idol fans vent anger on BSNL
Kurseong, Sept. 10: Fans of Indian Idol contestant Prashant Tamang demonstrated in front of the BSNL office here today alleging that their votes for the singer cast through landline phones did not reach the Sony Entertainment Television server on Friday night. Tamang, who hails from Darjeeling, has made it to the Top Two in the music reality show telecast on Sony. Buoyed by the singer’s success, his fans had spent Rs 75,000 to obtain 15 temporary landphone connections to vote for him. After dialling the Sony server number 19024242525 throughout Friday night, the fans felt that their efforts had not paid off. “We received a confirmation in the form of ‘Thank you’ from Sony after each vote was cast. But when we cross-checked with the telephone exchange, we found that only 85 calls were registered from 10 phones and 71 calls from the other five. But we had called at least 75,000 times,†said Kundan Yolmo, a fan. Dinesh Sherpa, another fan, blamed it on the “carelessness of the BSNLâ€. Uttam Das, a subdivisional engineer of the BSNL, came to pacify the agitators, but did not succeed. The divisional manager of Darjeeling district (hills), K.N. Karki, arrived at the spot to control the situation. He said: “The votes have reached the destination. The meter is not showing the actual reading because of a technical failure. An expert will be brought to Kurseong to rectify the fault.â€
at 10:58 AM Posted by The Sikkim Times
Labels: sikkim,news,gangtok indian idol, prashant tamang
Want to wish prashant a good luck for the up coming gala. I would like to request all the nepali around the world to unite and vote for him or help in anyway they can. Unity prevails.GO GORKE!!!
Kolkata, Sept. 13 (PTI): The countdown has began in the northeast for tomorrow's final of the "Indian Idol" singing contest with two finalists -- Darjeeling-born Prashant Tamang and Meghalaya's Amit Paul -- getting an overwhelming response from people of the region.
Tamang, declared a brand ambassador by the Sikkim goverment, has received support from several associations of journalists, taxi drivers, tribal youths and businessmen as well as ministers and MLAs.
Huge banners and hoardings have been put up across Sikkim that hail the young singer as the "glory of the hills". His mother has toured different parts of the state to make emotional appeals to people to vote for him on the reality show.
GNLF chief Subash Ghising, AIGL Chairman Madan Tamang and CPI-M MP Suraj Pathak have also campaigned for Tamang in the Darjeeling Hills.
In Meghalaya, the telecom department has assured people that they will not face any line congestion during the show featuring local lad Paul. A car rally was organised in Guwahati today to mobilise support for him.
Several other functions were also organised in the past few days to garner support for Paul, who hails from Meghalaya's capital Shillong.
The popular reality programme on Sony TV is the Indian version of Britain's "Pop Idol" show. The show in now in its third season and its earlier wineers were Abhijit Sawant and Sandeep Acharya.
and it begins - on Day 1 Trump will begin operations to deport millions of undocumented immigrants
Tourist Visa - Seeking Suggestions and Guidance
From Trump “I will revoke TPS, and deport them back to their country.”
advanced parole
Sajha Poll: Who is your favorite Nepali actress?
Mamta kafle bhatt is still missing
ढ्याउ गर्दा दसैँको खसी गनाउच
To Sajha admin
Problems of Nepalese students in US
अरुणिमाले दोस्रो पोई भेट्टाइछिन्
seriously, when applying for tech jobs in TPS, what you guys say when they ask if you have green card?
MAGA denaturalization proposal!!
Are Nepalese cheapstakes?
Nepali Psycho
How to Retrieve a Copy of Domestic Violence Complaint???
wanna be ruled by stupid or an Idiot ?
Travel Document for TPS (approved)
All the Qatar ailines from Nepal canceled to USA
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