Rahul Mahajan with fellow contestants at Bigg Boss house

The bourses are yo-yoing but stock punter Ajay Sharma has found a saviour: Rahul Mahajan. “Rahul is my trump card. I have quite a few thousands riding on him,” he said.

With no one looking like a winner in the market, the money Sharma (name changed) would normally bet on scrips he has now put on the late Pramod Mahajan’s insouciant son winning the Bigg Boss2 reality show.

“Rahul’s life and his on-screen behaviour will keep him in the show. Who would want to throw out a man who is bringing in so much spice on national TV?” Sharma hoped desperately.

He has placed his bets with the usual stock market bookmakers, who say the fitful bourses have forced them to think out of the box. For instance, they are accepting punts on who will win the state elections, and even on the Delhi weather.

“The punters are now desperate and are betting on anything,” grinned Nikhil Dixit (name changed), a Delhi-based bookie.

The idea of making a book on Bigg Boss2, claimed his fellow bookie Alok Srivastava (name changed), was a masterstroke.

“This is the first time that bets are being laid on a TV reality show. People have realised it’s a lucrative option; it’s here to stay and will become much bigger soon,” he said.

Srivastava, who himself has put Rs 20,000 on Rahul, said: “Over the past few months, bets for Rahul are coming in like a storm. None of the other contestants can touch him now as far as we bookies are concerned.”

Some Rs 80 crore is apparently riding on Rahul, who has risen from his alleged drug and domestic troubles to become a pin-up for audiences, punters and bookies alike. Neither Dixit nor Srivastava, however, would say what the odds are on the five remaining contestants.

The show, formatted on the lines of British television’s Celebrity Big Brother, which Shilpa Shetty won last year, is being shown on the Colours network. The contestants live in a villa on Mumbai’s outskirts in complete isolation — but can be seen and heard by viewers except when inside the bathroom — with one evicted every week. The housemates nominate the losers and the audience votes them out.

Bets are being placed on the other contestants too, with Rs 65 crore riding on model-turned-actor Zulfi Saeed, and Rs 25 crore each on Raja Choudhary and Ashutosh Kaushik. Monica Bedi has drawn the least bets, according to the bookies.

People who know Rahul aren’t surprised by the big bets on him.

“I knew Rahul long before I saw him on Bigg Boss2. He is a happy-go-lucky sort, reckless to the core and a flirt — and that’s how he is in the house. He was playing the game consciously from day one, and he knew what he was doing,” said Congress spokesperson Sanjay Nirupam, perhaps still smarting from his eviction in the first week.

“But generally, Rahul is what you see on screen — one can’t pretend too long when one is in virtual isolation from the world.”

Experts say Bigg Boss2 has been raking in TRPs mostly because of Rahul’s dalliances with fellow contestants Payal and Monica. According to Audience Measurement and Analytics (aMap), more than four million people watched the first episode.

Nirupam had told Rahul on the show, while reading his palm, that his fate line showed he would always be known as his father’s son and nothing more. But the 30-something Rahul has proved he can keep viewers glued to their TV sets for an hour every day. Audiences have refused to vote him out despite housemates nominating him again and again. Poll crores

The new betting isn’t confined to Bigg Boss2. The bookies say that bets amounting to hundreds of crores have been placed on the time of arrival of winter in Delhi this year. Last year in Mumbai, bets of Rs 2,000 crore were laid on the onset of monsoon in the city.

For a comparison, the IPL matches drew punts worth a little more than Rs 10,000 crore, they say, adding the betting on the upcoming state polls has outstripped everything.

“The betting on the Assembly elections in four states — Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh — has already reached Rs 25,000 crore. It is expected to skyrocket as the polls come nearer,” Dixit claimed.

The bets have been placed mostly on who will win all four: the United Progressive Alliance or the BJP. With the bookmakers favouring the BJP, which now rules three of these states, more punters have put their money on the UPA (see chart).

“The major bets have come from Goa, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Bhuj, Jaipur, Delhi, Kanpur, Indore and Coimbatore. We hope to make a profit out of this; else we cannot feed our families,” Dixit said.

“The betting is at various levels — which party will win, how many seats the parties would bag in the various states, and who is going to be chief minister. This involves a lot of money and we are hoping to rake in the moolah,” Srivastava said.

Betting on Lok Sabha or state polls is not new. Huge bets were placed on the July trust vote too, Dixit said.

Underworld betting syndicates transacted in several hundred crores during last year’s Uttar Pradesh elections, operating mostly from Kanpur and Lucknow, the state’s police say.

“Betting king” Satish Jain of Lucknow, arrested twice and released, made a pot because most punters anticipated a hung Assembly but Mayavati swept all before her, an officer said.

Last year’s Gujarat polls saw betting worth Rs 2,600 crore, with almost equal amounts placed on the BJP and the Congress, an Ahmedabad bookmaker said. He claimed the bookies made profits of about Rs 1,000 crore.

The deals are done over the phone, and the betters are given a code number. The main bookie was Mumbai-based, with three circuits operating in Navsari, Vadodara and Unja, near Patan, in Gujarat.

Delhi police said they were keeping tabs on the illegal betting market and hawala channels ahead of the elections.