MUMBAI: Heat is on! The votes have started rolling in and Star Plus claims to have received 1.4 million votes in just six days for its Dabur Anmol Shampoo Star Parivaar Awards.

The ceremony will held on 11 July 2004 at NCPA Nariman Point.

Unlike other companies, who offer goody bags and candies to their employees, Star Plus' designed an awards show to celebrate their actors and make them feel special last year. Of course, it makes for an interesting television viewing too. This time on, the channel claims to be making the show bigger and better then last year.

The company logs, meanwhile claim that the response to the voting that started on 27 May been double than last year.

The "parivaar" hasn't increased sizable and there is strong likelihood that the audience might feel a strong sense of deja vu, so the channel has quite novelties in store. For starters, the venue is rather peculiar.

Although MTV has hosted its style awards at the venue, it is the first time that NCPA will be hosting a traditional "awards ceremony".

Being a television, rather a character specific awards show, story telling is an important part of the whole show. " It is a family oriented show, one award for entire family viewing. We have divided the shows into acts for different age groups. For example, we have a kids act complete with special effects, girls versus boys tiff act for the teens-n- young and a medley traversing different era's of Bolywood with the older stars, spoof based act," gushes the event director Deepak Gattani.

Elucidating about the event Gattani offered, "It is an indoor event, so we have a set of very focused and undisturbed attention of the audience. Therefore, we have packed the two and half hour event with special effects. Every acts will have atleast three different back drops."

While he vouches for the children's act, the choreographer Geeta Kapur is pretty kicked about the story telling element. Known as the ace Bollywood choreographer- turned director Farah Khan's prodigy, Kapur is gung ho about the awards. "Although we have undivided attention, the audience is going to be very shifty. So we have decided to weave in a story in every act. Taking the popularity consensus we have a face-off between the vamps of the Star Plus show, an extremely sultry affair, " she said.

On the voting front, the ever popular Tulsi continues to be the biggest attraction in all the categories (Saas, Jethani, Maa, Jodi) that she is nominated in, says an company official.

While, last year was a clean sweep for her when she won the favourite patni and favourite bahu, this year too she seems to be heading in the similar direction leading in three out of the four categories she has been nominated in- favourite saas, favourite jethani, favourite maa.

In contrast of sort, the wicked, scheming, cunning "saut" Komolika has attracted a lot of votes in her category. She is leading the pack with over 64,000 votes for herself.

With telecast on Star Plus last year bagging the highest TRPs and the largest number of tune-ins for any television event in the year, hopes are only soaring high...