Union minister Nitin Gadkari spilled the controversial beans regarding the Padma Bhushan awards. Gadkari revealed that veteran actress Asha Parekh had approached him and had sought recommendations for the award.

He further said that many others had ‘chased’ him to gain the highest civilian award. Giving away Padma awards has turned a ‘headache’ these days, he said.

“One actress met me, she has turned old…Asha Parekh. She came to meet me in Mumbai. The lift to my residence was not working, she climbed up 12 floors, I felt very bad. I asked her why she took the trouble,” Gadkari said.

On hearing the request for being honoured with the third highest civilian award that is Padma Bhushan, which comes after Bharat Ratna and the Padma Vibhushan, Gadkari replied that she had already been honoured with Padmashree. However, the actress felt that she was entitled to be honoured with Padma Bhushan due to her achievements and contributions in film industry. Attempts to turn Parekh’s request into reality did not turn fruitful.

Parekh was honoured with Padmashree in 1992 and was felicitated with Lifetime Achievement award in 2014.

Tollywood stars are slowly catching up with their Bollywood counterparts in terms of finding themselves in embarrassing linkup gossips. Two such  actors are the Oohalu Gusagusalaade couple, Naga Shaurya and Raashi Khanna, who have been in news for their alleged off screen romance.

For the last one year, there have been several rumors doing the rounds that both Naga Shaurya and Raashi Khanna are no longer friends but that they seeing each other romantically. Breaking his silence finally, Naga Shaurya laughed off at the rumors and said that he has not even spoken to Raashi in the last six months.

Interestingly, Naga Shaurya’s revelation is almost similar to that of Raashi Khanna’s, who also said in an interview around a month ago that she had not been talking to her Oohalu Gusagusalaade hero since several months. These revelations from both the young stars should put an end to the rumors.

Popular actress and YSRCP’s firebrand lady politician Roja may have been going through a crisis in her political life, but if the ongoing reports in the Kollywood media circles are anything to go by, the actress has a tribute in store as her life story will soon be made as a biopic on the silver screen.

Just like in politics, Roja’s quick rise in films was also nothing short of a sensation. In her career as an actress, Roja acted in numerous films in Telugu and Tamil and shared screen space with almost all the leading stars in both the film industries. Roja then fell in love with popular Tamil director RK Selvamani and tied the knot eventually.

At the end of her career as a heroine, Roja stepped into politics and took a while to settle down in politics. In the process, the actress shuttled between various political parties to gain a strong  foothold in public life, before joining YSRCP and being elected as Nagari MLA. Roja’s political life has always been a stormy affair and recently, she was even suspended from the AP Assembly for a year.

Nandamuri Balakrishna’s Dictator is releasing this Sankranthi but his 100th film will not be launched in the next two or three months. Dictator is his 99th movie and he announced earlier that he would be starting his 100th movie in the direction of Boyapati Srinu in early 2016.

Media reports and latest press statements suggest that Boyapati Srinu who is at present directing Allu Arjun’s Sarainodu will be starting a movie with Bellamkonda Srinivas as hero from April. Bellamkonda Srinivas also informed the media that his next film is with Boyapati.

Hence Boyapati won’t be starting Balakrishna’s milestone movie till the year end. All Nandamuri fans were waiting for the launch of this movie in April once Boyapati wraps off Sarainodu but Balayya and Boyapati seems to have other plans. The reason for delay is cited as lack of right script. Boyapati directed two blockbusters with Balakrishna – Simha and Legend.

She is 43 and has battled with deadly cancer, but she is back and hotter than before. She is Lisa Ray.

She is synonym for strength, power and sexy looks. We don’t see these qualities phrased in a sentence often.

This is Lisa Ray for you killing it in the latest photo shoot. For beginners she was seen in Takkari Donga romancing our charming prince Mahesh Babu.

Yes, she is still looking at her sexiest best in spite of all the ailments and therapies.

After the release of ‘Soggade Chinni Nayana’ first look trailer, definitely there is a big silence on possibility of this film releasing for Pongal or not. In fact, media has no clue on post production status and how far hero Nagarjuna and director Kalyan Krishna are running towards meeting the target? However, here comes Nagarjuna announcing the release date as January 15 putting curtains down for all other random speculations.

As per unofficial reports, Nag really wants to avoid a clash with Jr NTR and Balakrishna in the Pongal season for the well being of all three films. Only and only if any of them among ‘Nannaku Prematho’ and ‘Dictator’ withdraws from the race then Nag thought of replacing it with ‘Soggade Chinni Nayana.’ Finally, Nag locking the date of Jan 15th means either of the above two Nandamuri films might miss the big battle.

Going by the production and post production updates, ‘Nannaku Prematho’ still has lot of works in pending and Sukumar might be able to lock the overall status only by 8th of January. This means, there is a solid explanation behind Nagarjuna’s prior announcement and we might get exact and revised status of ‘Nannaku Prematho’ only in next four to five days. Meanwhile, SGS would go for Censor Certification on 6th of this month.

The Regional Censor Board in Hyderabad had finished the censor formalities of Sharwanand’s Express Raja a short while ago. The movie was given ‘U’ certificate with no cuts. With this all the decks are cleared for the movie release.

Express Raja is confirmed for January 14th release as Sankranthi Special. Directed by Venkatadri Express fame Merlapaka Gandhi, there are positive vibes about the film with appealing music and trailers.

UV Creations which is one of the most happening production houses in Tollywood, is producing this movie. The producers Pramod and Vamsi are good friends of Prabhas. They forayed in to industry with Prabhas’ Mirchi.

Along with Mahesh Babu, even Pawan Kalyan has the habit of frequently meeting media friends at least during their movie release times or when going ahead with politically motivated moves. Mahesh does the same during ‘Srimanthudu’ times and none knew that he is such a media friendly person. It’s the same for Pawan Kalyan who kept on interacting with media during the times of Jana Sena Party announcement and then during the last elections.

Now, Jr Ntr is also set to repeat the same for ‘Nannaku Prematho.’ Crossing the criticism and escaping adverse humiliation killing media support, may be for the first time Junior NTR is going to throw a party for media friends today evening at an undisclosed location and then also giving a special interview.

Known a fact that NTR is going through a rough patch in career, this decision to mingle with media resulting in a positive support can be seen as a strategic gesture. Media always stood behind struggling heroes to gain their winning momentum back. Hopefully, this meeting will not go wasted and help ‘Nannaku Prematho’ directly.

Mass Maharaja had very dreadful experience last year with Kick-2. The movie is one of the biggest disasters released last year. The actor was seen as Robinhood in that film. However the Mass Maharaja is not considering Robinhood as a bad omen and is using it as the title of his next.

A new comer managed to impress the actor with a story titled Robinhood. The film will go on floors after the completion of Raviteja’s Yevado Okadu. Sri Ranjith Movies, the producer of Naga Shaurya’s Kalyana Vaibhogame will be lolling out money bags on this project.

They have already registered the title with Telugu Film Chamber of Commerce. More details of this new project later.