Mumbai: Even as news of Aishwarya Rai taking over JP Dutta’s ‘Umrao Jaan’ from Priyanka Chopra reaches showbiz shores, there’s news that Priyanka has found a way to equal her score with Ms ‘Tulip’ Rai. The ‘Aitraaz’ girl has replaced Rai in Rohan Sippy’s Abhishek Bachchan-Riteish Deshmukh caper ‘Bluff Master.’

Another shocking aspect of this sudden switch from one beauty queen to another is that Aishwarya wasn’t informed about her ouster from this project! In fact, while in Amsterdam for the Indian International Film Academy (IIFA) awards, she had been quite excited about going back to Mumbai for doing Rohan Sippy’s film. All of Ash’s and this writer’s efforts to contact the director were stonewalled.

When informed about this sudden change in the film’s cast, Aishwarya was genuinely shocked and disbelieving.

“How can that be? I’ve finalised everything, given Rohan the dates he wanted. Of course I

don’t have a written contract with them. But does one need to sign formal papers with friends? Maybe I’ve got to learn to be more practical and business-minded.

In Amsterdam, Abhishek and I were talking about what fun it would be to shoot together again. And now, this? No, there’s got to be some serious communication error,” said a disbelieving Ash. — HNS