Bhubaneswar: Prabhupada Mohanty, a native of Odisha’s Balasore, won a golden ticket in the audition round of popular singing reality show Indian Idol 13 in Saturday’s episode.
Among thousands of contestants who came for the audition in Delhi, 16 including Prabhupada have won golden tickets till now. Prabhupada was the winner of Sa Re Ga Ma Pa L’il Champs season 1, was among the top 12 contestants in season 5 of the same show, has participated in many Odia singing reality shows, and is playback singer in several Odia songs.
On Saturday, Bollywood singer Himesh Reshammiya picked Prabhupada from the contestants who had gathered in a stadium before the audition round began.
Later in the audition round, Prabhupada sang ‘Chori Kiya Re Jiya’ from ‘Dabangg’ movie. As he sang, judges Vishal Dadlani and Himesh Reshammiya became emotional as the song was composed by the duo Sajid-Wajid.
Wajid Khan died at the age of 42 on June 1, 2020 from kidney ailments.
It is pertinent to mention that contestants who get the golden ticket have to go through a few more rounds while contestants who get the golden mike directly perform in the Theatre Round.
Till now, only five contestants have won the golden mike — Rishi Singh from Ayodhya, Debasmita Roy from Kolkata, Navdeep Wadali (grandson of Wadali Brothers) from Amritsar, Vinit Singh (famous playback singer and former Sa Re Ga Ma Pa contestant) from Uttar Pradesh and Chirag Kotwal from Jammu & Kashmir.
