Rising Star continues to present us with something new and exciting every weekend as things get more challenging on the show. The first episode of ‘Duets challenge’ round was an interesting one, and it proved how contestants have to be prepared for anything and everything going forward. The new format saw contestants being randomly paired up to perform together and this had tensions rising as one spotty performance from a singer could mean trouble for the other as well. In their efforts to match each other in terms of quality and pitch, the contestants would have to step up their game.

Sunday night’s episode had some really grand performances as singers did their best to complement each other and gave us some quality entertainment. We now have our top 10 contestants who will continue their journey to try and become the first ever ‘Rising Star’.

Here’s how it all went down –

Ankita Sachdev and Vikram Jeet Singh set the stage on fire with their amazing performance as experts and audience were on their feet cheering for them. They sang ‘O Haseena Zulfowali’ and votes immediately started flooding in. They received a whopping 96%, the highest so far and the experts and audience requested that they sing one more time. Since they were the first performers, they proceeded to sit on the red chair but the experts and hosts joked that they might as well go to the safe zone.

Next came Diljot Qawwali Group and Ankita Kundu who gave another brilliantly energetic performance, as experts joined them on stage. They sang ‘Kajra Re / Jhoom Barabar Jhoom’ and managed to get 93% of votes. Shankar praised Ankita’s performance and called it better than the original. They proceeded to sit on the red chair, being the second performers.

Our last contestants of the night, Nitin Nayak and Chelsi Behura needed more than 96% to proceed to the safe zone. They beautifully sang ‘Bol Na Halke Halke’, and received 92% of votes falling short of the target set for them. The experts praised their performance with Shankar calling it Nitin’s best performance so far. This meant that they had to replace Ankita Sachdev & Vikram Jeet Singh from the red chair. Ankita and Vikram Jeet were safe, as a result.

The face-off between Diljot Qawwali Group-Ankita & Nitin-Chelsi was going to determine who would be eliminated. The former pair sang ‘Paan Khaye / Tharki Chokro’ and received 81% of votes while the latter sang ‘Soch Na Sake’ but could only get 67% of votes. Monali Thakur and Shankar Mahadevan held back on voting because they needed time to think but ultimately decided not to vote for Nitin-Chelsi which meant they stayed at 67%. Diljot Qawwali Group and Ankita Kundu went to the safe zone.

Nitin Nayak and Chelsi Behura lost the face-off round and had to say goodbye to Rising Star.