During the times of the nationwide lockdown due to the Coronavirus pandemic, everyone is bound to be home, with very few options to spend the day without boredom and panic. In these tough times. While TV is a good option to stay distracted, most TV shows have be rerunning their old episodes because of the shooting being stalled. Hence, to calm people down by taking them down on the road of nostalgia, Doordarshan has decided to screen the epic, BR Chopra’s Mahabharata, which ran successfully from 1988 to 1990. Since Pen India LTD holds all the rights of the celebrated mythological tele series, Doordarshan reached out to Pen studios’ CMD Dr Jayantilal Gada for the rights.
“Doordarshan was in talks with PEN India for the last couple of months for the procurement of the rights for the telecast of Mahabharata. But, after the Coronavirus stalled most activities the country, the process got accelerated. The Minister of Information and Broadcasting, Prakash Javdekar, requested Dr Jayantilal Gada to share the rights as soon as possible and Dr Gada agreed immediately to lend all the support possible to Doordarshan for telecasting Mahabharata. He is also in talks with Renu Chopra for coming up with a new version of the Mahabharata using high-end technology for creating a great quality product,” says a source
The insider adds that Pen studios will also upload all the episodes of the prestigious series on their YouTube channel, Pen Bhakti, so that it gives hope to Indians and enables parents to get their kids to watch the series and understand its importance
BR Chopra’s Mahabharata featured Mukesh Khanna as Bhishma, Pankaj Dheer as Karna, Gajendra Chouhan as Yudhishthir, Arjun as Arjun, Roopa Ganguly as Draupadi, Puneet Issar as Duryodhan and Nitish Bharadwaj as Krishna, among others.