Viewers barely made it through images of Satish Kaushik's naked torso twice last year. A new bar has been set: Loosely based on the Bhanvari Devi sex scandal, Dirty Politics can best be described as Om Puri's Boom. In Lalit Modi's Rajasthan, Puri plays a dirty old minister with his heart and groins set on a dancer named Anokhi Devi (Sherawat).

We know what it does to many of our smug and glib leaders. But politics also seems to bring the very worst out of some Bollywood filmmakers. Here is another maddeningly muddled Mumbai movie that sets out to lay bare the filth and sleaze that Indian politics is usually associated with in the popular imagination but only manages to whip up bushels of cinematic muck. Dirty Politics is, from end to end, a messy affair that reeks of all-round mediocrity despite the presence in the cast of actors of the calibre of Om Puri and Naseeruddin Shah.

Bollywood is a place where, they say that, there are no permanent friendships or no permanent enemies, much like the world of politics and politicians. And when the two meet ('Bollywood' and 'Politics'), the resultant is the K.C.Bokadia directed DIRTY POLITICS, which releases this week. Does this film expose the dirtiness of politics or the politics (even) in dirtiness

There was really no earthly reason for me to drag myself off to see `Dirty Politics', espcially on Holi, because the last time K C Bokadia did something worth looking at was more years back than I can remember. But then I whizzed past all my pals splashing `gulal', dodging several enthusiastic kids and their coloured water filled balloons, to see just how many shades Mallika Sherawat has left.