Miss India-World Laxmi Pandit scandal
Swheta Singh, Indiadaily correspondent from Mumbai
Miss India-World Laxmi Pandit scandal
Swheta
Singh, Indiadaily correspondent from Mumbai
Laxmi Pandit (left) and her ‘husband’ Siddharth Mishra
Laxmi Pandit and her ‘husband’ Siddharth Mishra both are professional beauty pageants contestants who fraudulently make a career out of winning goodies in
beauty contests. Pandit, who won the Miss India-World title on Saturday, has been in the news due to media reports that she is actually married when the contest allows only unmarried women to participate. Controversial Femina Miss India-World title winner Laxmi Pandit was last year thrown out of Miss India’s rival beauty contest Gladrags Model and Man-Hunt for submitting a fake resume/profile. Maureen Wadia, organiser, Gladrags, said: “During our selection process, we found far too many discrepancies and lies on her resumé. We heard that she was married. Having spent a lot of time and money on training her for three weeks, we decided to chuck her out.” Wadia said that though she was debarred after getting short-listed for the Model-Hunt, according to contractual agreements, Pandit could not have entered another pageant within the same year but still entered the Miss India contest.
While the fate of Pandit’s crown will be decided by the Miss India organisers today, Gladrags has also decided to kick out Pandit’s partner and alleged husband Siddharth Mishra, who is a short-listed contestant for its coming April 2 event.
Wadia said he too had posed as a bachelor. “I hear the police have Siddharth Mishra’s marriage certificate. This pageant is strictly for singles. We shall drop him after examining the papers,” she said.
According to the allegedly married couple’s verification form with the Malad police, Mishra is a doctor at Cumballa Hill Hospital. However, he allegedly did not mention this on the CV sent to the Model-Hunt organisers.
Pandit had also recently won a beauty contest titled VLCC Miss Perfect 10. As per police verification papers, she had been living as Mishra’s wife at Liberty Gardens, Malad, for a few months after shifting out of another Malad apartment. Both Mishra and Pandit, according to the same police document, hail from Gangavati in Karnataka.
Citing the couple’s case, Wadia mentioned a common phenomenon at beauty pageants called “veteran contest entrants.”
She said, “Several people make a profession out of enrolling into pageants. They keep getting groomed and re-entering through changing their full names, cities they appear from or other fabrications in their entry forms.
Pandit’s and Mishra’s was a typical case of youngsters who make such contests unfair to other eligible participants.”