List of Bigg Boss controversies

Bigg Boss is a television reality show broadcast on Colors channel and star vijay channel in India. It follows the Big Brother format, which was first developed by Endemol in the Netherlands. Within a span of 11 years of telecast, Bigg Boss has rolled out 11 Seasons (season 11, last aired on Colors) and one spin-off version thus establishing itself as one of the most popular reality TV series in India.

Season 2

• Rahul Mahajan made headlines when he broke the rules of the show and escaped over the house by jumping over the wall.^[1]
• Raja Chaudhary and Sambhavna Seth abused each other before getting really intimate. They were also caught kissing during the show.^[2]

Season 3

• In the third season, housemate Vindu Dara Singh was often credited as Akshay Kumar's favourite housemate after playing Kumar’s sidekick in “Kambakkht Ishq”^[3] and becoming good friends with him. With being hated by fellow inmates inside the house for his conduct accompanied by the resentment against him from the audiences Vindu survived seven evictions after consecutively getting nominated from eighth week onwards. Vindu went on to win the season and was also announced the most stylish and bold contestant consequently winning a Chevrolet Cruze and Rs. 1 crore.

• Contestant Kamal Rashid Khan had caused ruckus inside the house which lead to a controversial exit by makers after he threw a bottle and Rohit Verma but later hit Shilpa Shetty's sister, Shamita Shetty.^[4]

Season 4

• TV actors Sara Khan and Ali Merchant were paid Rs.50 lakh to get married on the show.^[5] The wedding is considered forbidden in Islam, because Sara Khan and Ali Merchant were already married.^[6] Ali Merchant's mother, Salma, however, said Muslim law permitted the same couple to remarry as many times as they wished to.^[7]
• Pakistani actress Veena Malik was involved in physical relationship with Ashmit Patel.^[1]
• During the fourth season, TV actress Sara Khan objected to the Bigg Boss' behaviour towards fellow-housemate Dolly Bindra. Ever since Dolly Bindra re-entered the house, there had been quite a bit of a change in her stance and attitude towards the inmates of the house. Dolly became quite polite and got some benefits like she was made the queen immediately after she re-entered, thereby enabling her to get certain benefits that the others couldn't even dream of. Thus, with almost everyone quite flabbergasted, Sara protested against partiality towards Dolly. Sara kept on complaining that 'Bigg Boss' was not fair at which Samir Soni, who too, had re-entered agreed with what Sara had to say. Sara was later strictly warned by the Bigg Boss and host Salman Khan regarding these vague accusations.^[8]

Season 5

• Pooja Missra who was constantly bullied on the show was ejected. She gave her fellow contestant Siddarth Bhardwaj a little push, which the makers decided to evict her. However, the TRP became really low, as the show started losing its viewership. The TRP even came at 0.69 at one point. ^[9]

Season 6

• Soon after the entry of Kashif Qureshi, a common man chosen via auditions held across India, as an inmate of the house the whole exercise of selecting an unknown person to be part of Bigg Boss seemed to have come into question and has been reportedly a planned one. After Kashif was selected from the three short-listed hopefuls to enter the house the media scrutinized every detail that linked to Kashif's background. Unexpectedly Qureshi was found to personally know Salman Khan since he was shooting Wanted.^[10]
• Contestant Iman Siddiqui made a statement about host Salman Khan that Salman Khan owed him money.^[11] He also removed his clothes after a midnight fight with his co-participant.

Season 7

• Armaan Kohli was arrested from the set of the show when a complaint filed by British singer-actress Sofia Hayat for allegedly assaulting her during their stay in the show.^[12]
• The host Salman Khan was caught favoring Tanisha Mukherjee instead of Kushal Tandon despite her unarguably violent behavior and Khan supported all of Mukherjee’s wrongdoings.^[13]

Season 8

• Karishma Tanna had a big fight with Gautam Gulati after he abused her during the Hijack task in the second week after Sonali's eviction. This lead to whole house turning against Gautam.^[14]

• The introduction of special panel members on occasional eviction episodes came under controversy during the season. The production team was mainly accused for violating the concept of the original Big Brother franchise and allowing interference from external agents into the house environment. The second week saw appearances from Andy and Kamya who were seen forcing their opinions on the housemates by calling it a guide to their stay. However Kamya, on a relative off-note, went on to malign targeted housemates' stance and reputation by wording her take as the 'viewer's point of view'.^[15] Subsequent to the episode's airing critics termed her conduct as 'adding script to a rather spontaneous programme'. A similar incident took place in the fourth week where Sargun Mehta's argument with Minissha received much backlash from viewers.^[16][17][18] Despite demands and complaints from viewers, the broadcaster declined the opportunity to explain the addition.^[19] Furthermore, Salman Khan was also criticized for siding with Sonali Raut without a hint of care for housemates' or viewers' opinion and judgement citing the live feed as enough proof for evaluation. However viewers expressed disapprobation since the live feed being released on the channel's website was only broadcasting previously recorded content.^[20]
• In November 2014, on Gautam Gulati's birthday, Diandra Soares had took him into the bathroom which lead to another controversial topic of the house.^[21] After Diandra's eviction, there was another controversial topic after reports started saying she was pregnant when she reportedly went to the hospital but later she denied all of the rumours.^[22][23]
• Ali Quli Mirza was trying to escape from the show by climbing up the rooftop to escape the house where he was slapped by Sonali Raut for passing inappropriate remarks.^[24]

Season 9

During the task, contestant Rishabh Sinha made actor, Kishwar Merchant walk like a dog for three hours.^[28]

Season 10

• Priyanka Jagga, after creating fights in the house and saying nasty things to Lopamudra Raut and Monalisa had got kicked out by host Salman Khan.^[29]

• Contestant Swami Om put his urine on co-contestants Bani and Rohan. Later, the makers of the show evicted Swami Om. He has had several exits before on the show but later came back.^[30]

• The fight between Bani J and Lopamudra Raut got ugly after the BB Call Centre" which lead to Bani trying to strangle Lopamudra's neck.^[31]

• The voting rules for the final week were changed abruptly following Rohan Mehra's eviction. The previous rule which allowed multiple votes, capped at 99, per IP and phone number were brought down to 1. This created uproar from the viewers who were not officially or appropriately informed of the tweak. The voters were not refunded money for any additional votes they had made since 1 vote submission from online and offline sources was recorded and the rest were discarded. Viacom 18 received 570 complaints during the night of the final when Manu Punjabi was shown to have quit the competition before the results were announced. Realising that the final was pre-recorded with the outcome known to the producers before the episode aired the viewers were appalled that voting lines for Manu were kept open throughout. The complaints increased overnight to a record 1140 after the final had finished airing.

Season 11

• Zubair Khan (evicted contestant), who attempted suicide to get out of the show was hospitalized for consuming pills after host Salman Khan blasted him for using abusive language against women of the house. He claims that Salman Khan threatened him that he would not be able to work in the industry anymore once he leaves the house.^[32][33] The host Salman Khan called him ‘dog' on the telecast episode.^[34] Later Salman Khan apologized by saying, "I really need to apologize... I am really sorry to all the dogs of this world".^[35]

References