Ke Bani Crorepati

Did You Know?

• The show had a clock: 30 seconds for questions 1-5, 45 seconds for questions 6-10, and no clock for questions 11-15.
• Rajesh Singh won the top prize of ₹1,00,00,000 on 27 July 2011.
• Five winners each won ₹25,00,000: Sonakshi Sinha (17 June 2011), Kaushalendra Kumar Shukla (22 June 2011), Dr. Kuldip Singh (13 July 2011), Hema Malini (29 July 2011), and Dharmendra (8 August 2011).
• Tiku Chhabra won ₹0 after getting the 4th question wrong on 4 August 2011.

Lifelines

Three lifelines were used in this season. The 50:50 lifeline: if the contestant used this lifeline, the host would ask the computer to remove two of the wrong answers, leaving one right answer and one wrong answer, giving the contestant a 50% chance of answering correctly. Phone-a-Friend: the contestant would call one of three pre-arranged friends who had provided their phone numbers in advance. The host would usually start by talking to the friend and introducing them to viewers, then hand the call to the contestant, who had 30 seconds to ask and hope for a reply. Audience Poll: the host would repeat the question to the audience, who had 10 seconds to answer using touchpads. Their choices were displayed to the contestant in percentages in bar-graph format on the monitors of the host, contestant, and TV viewers.

Controversy

Shatrughan Sinha filed a report against the top officials of Mahuaa channel. He hosts the game show Ke Bani Crorepati, which is based on Kaun Banega Crorepati, and confirms that the makers of the show did not give many of the celebrity guests the amount they won on the show. Not that the celebrities are asking, but most of that money was supposed to go for charity, and that makes Shatrughan even more furious. He has convicted the makers for approximately ₹1.75 crore. As a good host of the show, Sinha had roped in celebs like Dharmendra, Hema Malini, Govinda and Sonakshi Sinha and along with former finance minister, Yashwant Sinha as guest participants. Also, the BJP parliamentarian accused the channel of subtracting ₹25 lakhs as tax deducted at source (TDS) from his remuneration, but never depositing that amount to the Income Tax department. The program was produced by BIG Synergy Media Limited for Mahuaa, who had contacted Sonakshi Sinha’s father in early 2011 to anchor the show, which was to have 50 episodes in all with prize money amounting to ₹1 crore. According to Sinha all these were done in bad faith and the channel must, at once, pay the dues. Bollywoodlife.com said that he did a very noble deed by taking the matter to the police.