They say, “controversy sells”, and when it comes to Nadia Khan there’s no shortage of it. Apart from the regular marketing and publicity gimmicks, Geo has now gone as far as making baseless accusations against renowned people in the society. Geo’s Nadia Khan Show is a major exponent of such publicity stunts where “Miss I’m-Always-Right”, Nadia Khan runs her mouth uncontrollably in order to raise ratings and give people tons of gossip and “masala”. No wonder the show is doing so well, in fact, it is the most watched Pakistani show, bringing in audiences from around the globe.
The latest feather in Nadia Khan’s and Geo’s caps is the controversy that was sparked when people from Miss Pakistan World were invited to the show. Heated discussions about the inclusion of a “swimsuit round” took place where Sonia Ahmed, the president of the company, explained that in order to create parity with international pageants from around the world, a swimsuit round is compulsory as per international rules and regulations of beauty pageants. Nadia Khan seemed to play things cool at that point. But in later shows, she bashed Miss Pakistan World further and made derogatory remarks about them. She went on to allege that the Miss Pakistan World team was detained at the Dubai Airport.
There are always two sides to a story. Sonia Ahmed strongly condemned Nadia Khan’s outrageous behavior on the show. She made a call to Hamid Waleed, Creative Director of programmes in Lahore for GEO TV, to protest against the manner in which her team was treated by Geo and Nadia Khan. Furthermore, she vowed not to work with Geo again, calling it a corrupt and biased channel. She fought back with allegations of her own against Nadia Khan, reminding Hamid Waleed of the videos circulating on YouTube of Nadia Khan dancing in weddings, calling it a “mujra”(watch here). As a result of this backlash, Hamid Waleed admitted his mistake and asked Sonia to launch an official complaint against Nadia Khan through e-mail. He called Nadia Khan a lying “bicchoo” (scorpion) and the written complaint, according to him, was necessary in order have something of substance against Nadia Khan instead of useless verbal abuse. The call was recorded and released on YouTube.(watch here and here)
It is clear that Nadia Khan likes to create controversy for the sake of publicity but it is important to bring this to people’s attention that her own personal life is full of controversies. After moving to Dubai in the year 2000 and marrying Khawar Iqbal, she failed to find work and subsequently worked as a drama teacher at Dubai Gem private School where she was ultimately forced to leave the school. Many students stipulate that she was ousted for sexual promiscuity with a male student, but these reports remain unconfirmed by the school staff. She was back in news in 2005 after she filed separation papers against her husband and in-laws in a Karachi Court. She also wanted full custody of her daughter. But the dispute was later settled outside of court and Nadia moved back in with her husband. In the year 2007, a private video of Nadia Khan dancing at a wedding was released on the internet. Though the video had Nadia dancing to some Indian movie songs with a couple of friends, a typical ritual in Pakistani weddings, the video was met with a lot of criticism. It is unknown if Nadia Khan is aware of the video being public. But it is clear that she needs to be way more responsible and think twice before pointing fingers and making allegations about others because what goes around, comes around.
Athar Ali Khan @ Rewaj
