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Amitabh Bachchan

Yorkshire gets ready to host Bollywood extravaganza
07th June 2007 09.01 IST
By Agencies

Yorkshire is all set to witness the glitz and glam of Bollywood as movie stars led by Bollywood mega superstar Amitabh Bachchan started arriving at the British county to attend the eighth International Indian Film Academy awards (IIFA), which kicks off today.

There will be 50 IIFA-related events in Leeds, Sheffield, Bradford, York and Hull during the four-day extravaganza, with an estimated 500 Bollywood personalities expected to participate, according to Sabbas Joseph, director of Wizcraft, which is managing the show.

Judith Donovan, chairman of the Yorkshire Tourist Board, said she expected 28,000 extra tourists, half of them from overseas, to visit Yorkshire during the event, which is likely to be watched on television by some 500 million people worldwide.

"The sheer scale, height, glam, glitz is just going to be mind-blowing," Donovan, who returned recently from a trip to India aimed at promoting Yorkshire's heritent to the Oscars, at Sheffield's Hallam FM Arena on Saturday, which will see in attendance the likes of Bachchan along with son Abhishek Bachchan and his gorgeous wife Aishwarya Rai .

Other top Bollywood stars expected to walk the red carpet include Ajay Devgan and Kajol , Salman Khan , John Abraham and Bipasha Basu , Shilpa Shetty , Hrithik Roshan , Rani Mukherjee , Saif Ali Khan , Konkona Sen Sharma , Rakyesh Omprakash Mehra , Yash Chopra , Karan Johar , Priyanka Chopra , Javed Akhtar , Shabana Azmi , Rituparno Ghosh and Govinda .

Also, a "Global Business Forum" will be held on Thursday where delegates from Yorkshire Forward and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce (FICCI) will meet at the Royal Armouries at Leeds.

A Memorandum of Understanding is expected to be signed, stipulating how Yorkshire could meet India's 160 billion pounds infrastructure requirements by 2012, especially in the field of clean energy, and the right areas for inward Indian investment in the Yorkshire and Humber region.

"There are huge commercial opportunities for our financial services, our environmental companies and others.

The principal reason is an economic one about building long-term relationships between Yorkshire Forward and FICCI," said Riordan, CEO of Yorkshire Forward.

The county is also keen to use IIFA to boost tourism and persuade Bollywood to shoot a big film entirely on location.

"Visit Britain has strategically identified India and China as the two long-term developing markets for overseas tourists to come to Britain," Donovan said.

An Indo-British film treaty is being pursued by Britain's Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell, while Amit Mitra, FICCI Secretary General, sees immediate prospects for partnerships in three fields -- animation, gaming and special effects -- which are expanding rapidly in India because of the country's strength in software.

"A digital revolution is under way in India in the entertainment sector," Mitra said. "There can be joint ventures in this because there is synergy with British companies - an Indian animator can tie up with a British animator."

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