Click to play videoNew Delhi: Actress and cricket anchor Mandira Bedi reacted swiftly to the controversy over her wearing the Indian colours in a disrespectful manner during the live telecast of the Cricket World Cup on SetMax on Saturday evening and apologised to the nation for what she called an "inadvertent" lapse.
Alerted in Barbados about the stir created by her sari in India, Mandira changed her outfit during the mid-innings break. At the lunch break, when she appeared on the private television channel along with Charu Sharma, she made it a point to refer to the issue and apologise for the mistake.
"I deeply apologise," Mandira said, before going into hard cricket talk. "I didn't mean to disrespect the (Indian) national flag," she claimed.
Even as her co-host and the cricket experts on the show looked on, Mandira profusely apologised for the lapse, repeatedly calling it an inadvertent slip. "I assure that it was inadvertent. If I have hurt the national sentiments, I deeply apologise," Mandira said on the live show.
Earlier on the show, Mandira was seen wearing a sari, which had an image of the Indian Tricolour below her waist, which was against the constitutional norm. Mandira's sari on the occasion had images of national flags of all the cricket-playing nations printed on it. But the image of the Indian Tricolour was in a rather disrespectful position.
The Indian Government had cleared wearing of images of the Indian Tricolour on clothing in 2005, but had ruled that the flag can only be displayed on garments above the waist.
As soon as the show kicked off at 1700 hours (IST) on Saturday evening and the Indian cricket fans glued to their television sets for some good cricket, SMSs started doing the rounds in India, pointing fingers at the aberration on Mandira's sari.
According to sources, the controversial sari was part of a special collection designed by Satya Paul, which is being sported exclusively by Mandira Bedi during the ongoing World Cup.
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