Veteran actress Vijayta Pandit, who became an overnight star after the release of the film Love Story opposite Kumar Gaurav in 1981, recently opened up about her ups and downs in her career in Bollywood. Despite the film’s success, Vijayta struggled to deliver another hit as she claims that Kumar’s father and popular actor Rajendra Kumar had her removed from films after learning about her and Kumar’s off-screen romance.

Vijayta and Kumar Gaurav fell in love with each other on the sets of Love Story and despite being engaged to Raj Kapoor’s daughter, he wanted to marry Vijayta.

Vijayta told how famous filmmaker Ramanand Sagar wanted to work with her in a film called Romance, but she was replaced by Poonam Dhillon. She also shot for ten days in Goa for a film called Raahi. However, she claimed that Rajendra Kumar got her removed from the film.

“Rajendra ji got me removed from all the films,” Pandit said in an interview. lehren retro“He is the main person who didn’t let me work with Bunty (Kumar Gaurav). All the producers would say they wanted to cast Bunty and me; it’s a hit pair. But Rajendra ji would say, ‘Heroine se picture nahi banti hai (a film doesn’t become a hit because of the heroine), it becomes a hit because of the hero.’ He would suggest other actresses like Poonam Dhillon, Padmini Kolhapuri and Rati Agnihotri instead.”

Vijayta, 57, further described Rajendra Kumar’s ill-fated attempts to replicate the success of Love Story for his son Kumar Gaurav. After 15-20 flop films, Rajendra cast a big name like Madhuri Dixit for Kumar’s film Phool. “He invested all the money he earned from Love Story in that film and eventually lost that too,” Vijayta lamented.

Reflecting on what could have been, he said, “If we (he and Kumar Gaurav) had continued working together, we would have been successful. After the success of Love Story, people wanted to see us together.” Gaurav worked with several actresses, but none of their films were successful. “Rajendra Kumar even called an actor from Madras to work with his son; still, none of their films worked. All were flops.”

After ending her relationship with Kumar Gaurav, Vijayta, sister of music composer duo Jatin-Lalit, married Aadesh Srivastava in 1990, with whom she has two sons. Aadesh died in 2015.