By: Onkar Sharma

I have watched the clip more times than I should. A Cabinet minister walks onto a stage in Uttarakhand, a legend of Indian pop is standing there with a microphone, and in front of a crowd the minister says: “We’ve paid you so much money to be here, and you’re making fools of us.”

My first reaction was the same as most people’s. It looked cruel. Nobody should be dressed down in public, whatever the reason, and the colleagues who said so, from Anupam Kher to Badshah, were right. ThePrint’s opinion writer made the same point: even if the allegation were true, performance problems belong with the organisers or the artist’s team, not in front of an audience.

But I keep coming back to the people nobody is talking about, the ones who booked him.

What we know, and what we don’t

The event was the Siddhpeeth Maa Kunjapuri Tourism and Development Fair in Tehri Garhwal, on October 18, during Navratri. Minister Subodh Uniyal says Mehndi was paid ₹35 lakh in advance, plus travel and hotels. Uniyal alleged that Mehndi seemed disoriented, was lip-syncing and may have been under the influence. The last of these has not been established, and Mika Singh has strongly denied that his brother drinks.

ETV Bharat reported that the fair’s committee had first booked Sunanda Sharma, who cancelled at the last minute for health reasons. According to the same report, the committee called Mehndi only two days before the show, and backstage he told them he could not perform live because of ill health. Mika Singh says his brother has been unwell for two years and is still recovering. Mehndi’s own public response so far has been a post thanking Mika for standing up for him. I could find no statement from the organisers themselves.

So I don’t know whether the organisers were told before the show that he was unwell. The minister says they were not. The committee, as reported, heard it backstage. Those two accounts cannot both be the full story, and I won’t pretend to know which is.

Why the organiser deserves a hearing

A fair like this is not a private party. Money is committed in advance. Hotels are booked. Thousands of people have turned up, many of whom have waited all evening for one name. If the headline act cannot do the show as sold, the organiser has no good options. They can’t call it off in front of a crowd, and they can’t find a replacement at ten at night. Uniyal’s line, “The public are not doctors to know this,” is blunt, but it contains a real point: illness is a reason to tell people, not a reason to say nothing.

The same story has a model of how this can be handled. Uniyal says Sunanda Sharma, when illness stopped her performing, refunded her full fee. That is not weakness. It is what lets everyone move on with their dignity.

It isn’t new

I don’t want to pretend this is about one artist, because it isn’t. India’s growing live-music business keeps running into the same tension between stars and the people who stage them.

In March 2025, Neha Kakkar’s concert in Melbourne turned into a fiasco. The organisers said she arrived three hours late and claimed a loss of about $529,000 along with bans from venues. She wrote, “The organisers ran away with my money and others too,” said her band was left without food or water, and that her sound check was held up because the sound vendor had not been paid. I can’t tell you who was right. That is the point: when a show collapses, each side tells a different story.

Other cases are more about audiences than organisers, but they show the same lack of accountability. ThePrint’s writer cites a Jasmine Sandlas show in Hyderabad billed for 8 p.m. that began about 11:20 p.m. with no apology, and a fan’s complaint that AP Dhillon lip-synced at a Vancouver show. And the reverse also happens. Monali Thakur walked off stage in Varanasi in December 2024 after saying the stage was unsafe. Organisers fail artists too.

What I’d like to see

None of this excuses what happened on that stage. A minister, with a crowd behind him, is not a fair forum. Sona Mohapatra’s view strikes me as the honest one: artists must be accountable to audiences who pay to watch them, and public humiliation is not how you enforce that.

What I’d like instead is boring and practical. Health conditions disclosed to organisers before a booking, not backstage. Clear refund or substitute clauses in contracts. A two-minute honest word from the stage (“I am unwell, and I’ll do what I can”) before a crowd starts guessing. And problems taken to the artist’s team, privately, within hours.

Daler Mehndi has given this country decades of joy. He deserves kindness and the benefit of the doubt on his health. The people who booked him deserve to be asked what happened, too. Right now, only one side has been heard.

Please share your feedback on what you think of this. But also imagine yourself in the shoes of a person who’s waded through the traffic and muscled their way into the crowd to get the best seat possible from where you can watch/hear your favourite artist.

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Sources: Outlook India, Outlook India (Uniyal), ETV Bharat, ThePrint, Khaleej Times (ANI), Siasat (IANS) on the organisers’ claims, Siasat on Neha Kakkar’s account, Gulf News on Monali Thakur.