Mumbai, March 29
The controversy over the Miss India Contest winner, Lakshmi Pandit, got murkier today with the organisers of Gladrags Mega Model contest claiming that she had been disqualified in 2003 for various discrepancies in her bio-data.Maureen Wadia, organiser of the leading beauty pageant, said: “Lakshmi had entered the mega model contest in 2003. However, we were forced to disqualify her following discrepancies in the information provided to us by her.”
“There was a lot inconsistency in the information provided by Lakshmi. Though in her entry form she had filled her birth year as 1981, she appeared to have forgotten the information when she turned up for the personal interviews three months later. Moreover, the xerox of her passport, issued in Bangalore, shows her birthplace as Mysore.
“There were strong reasons to doubt her information because she said she had made it in the top six in the Miss India contest in 2002,” Ms Wadia said.
“We were forced to disqualify her, a week before the contest as we had strong reasons to suspect the information provided by her”, she claimed.
Interestingly, Ms Wadia said Mr Siddharth Mishra, alleged to be Lakshmi’s husband, is a contestant who has enrolled for this year’s Gladrags Manhunt contest. “The address provided by Siddharth and Lakshmi were the same,” she said.
“We are still investigating Mishra’s marital status. If he was found to be a married man, he would automatically be disqualified because the contest was for single men.”
Lakshmi, the 22-year-old city-based classical dancer, had bagged the ‘Miss India-World’ crown at Ponds Femina Miss India 2004 contest held here on Saturday night.
The winner’s crown came under jeopardy today when a television channel carried a news report that Pandit had admitted to being a married woman when she moved into a rented house in a city suburb with one Siddharth Mishra.
— PTI
