Arijit Singh finally gets to sing Dil Diyan Gallan, fans turn on Salman Khan and Atif Aslam

Arijit Singh performed Dil Diyan Gallan at a recent concert in Pune. On the surface, there couldn’t be a more normal thing to do -- Arijit is a singer and Dil Diyan Gallan is a song, and a very popular one at that. But here’s where it gets interesting. Arijit Singh is rumoured to have had several disagreements with star Salman Khan in the past, to the point that Arijit once claimed that Salman had him sacked from a project. Arijit vented out his frustration by writing an open letter about his dream of singing for Salman being snatched away. Until now.

First, a bit of context: In 2016, Arijit wrote, and quickly deleted, a public letter in which he accused Salman Khan of having him removed from the soundtrack of his wrestling drama, Sultan. “I have sung enough songs sir. But I want to retire with at least one song of you keeping in my library. Please do not take away this feeling,” he wrote. It was reported that the tiff went back to 2014, when Arijit inadvertently ‘insulted’ Salman at an awards show.

Read: Salman Khan got Arijit’s voice removed from Welcome to New York song? Producer says singer never recorded for the film

The fiasco was rekindled when, in 2018, it was reported that Salman hadn’t forgiven Arijit. According to a report, the star had demanded that a song sung by Arijit for Welcome to New York, in which Salman played a cameo, be removed. “Arijit has sung the rough scratch of the track which was to be used in the film. However, Salman was quite miffed and he told the makers, ‘Anyone in the fraternity could croon the track but Arijit,’” the report quoted a source as saying.

Both incidents were denied by persons close to Salman. One of the producers of Welcome to New York said that Arijit had never sung for the film.

Singer-turned-Union minister Babul Supriyo, capitalising on this new controversy, said that no Pakistani singers should be allowed to perform numbers for Indian movies - it was rumoured that Rahat Fateh Ali Khan had been roped in to replace Arijit for the Welcome to New York song. He went one step further and speculated that Arijit would have done a better job with Dil Diyan Gallan - a song from Salman’s Tiger Zinda Hai - than Atif Aslam, who finally performed it. “Our very own Arijit could have done a much better job,” Supriyo said.

It took a few years, but Supriyo’s pipe-dreams came true. Here’s Arijit singing Dil Diyan Gallan in Pune. Some commentors on YouTube, however, seem to be on Supriyo’s side. The comments ranged from praising Arijit’s rendition of the song to abusing Atif.

Here are some examples:

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