Karan Johar is best friends with a lot of production houses and directors . He spoke to Imtiaz and requested him to cast Alia in highway after Soty released . Wouldn't have been possible if he wasn't powerful and I really liked Alia in the movie so it was good . But he again spoke to Zoya and made Gully boy happen eversince it was on cards from 2016 . Initial choice wasn't Alia and karan being Zoya's best friend spoke to her again and I felt Alia was decent as Safeena but her pr overhyped her way too much . Then Karan spoke to Bhansali during the shooting process of kalank and showed him rushes of Alia's roop and made a movie deal happen between them .
Alia herself said Kalank wasn't supposed to be made with her in the lead . The real casting was different but she got insecure and spoke to Abhishek and Karan about it and landed the film which later on ended up becoming an embarrassment for them all .

Raazi was supposed to be made by junglee with some other actress but Karan has a network through which he finds out who's doing what and gets information when projects are in the budding phase of funding and being bank rolled. that's when he told Meghna that he would join as a producer and give her the budget she wants but she'd have to cast Alia and replace the original girl with her. Meghna who had been struggling to get proper budgets found the deal better and opted for Alia . This kind of lobbying happens when he wants his most favorite kid to land up better projects.

So anyone who keeps arguing about how is he responsible for films outside dharma and makes delusional statements is just pretending to not know anything because they all are twitter Stans .

If you go through the strategy Alia's pr people at Matrix you'll notice them focussing way too much on Varia , stan shipping with Ranbir and accusing any neutral opinion as a hate campaign against her and her solo status by discrediting mavericks like Bhansali . Raazi and Uri are well made patriotic films with good to best performances by Alia and Vicky . She wouldn't have received the same love from Darlings or even a below avg romcom . Alia is smart and she always picks the best scripts through her people and karan's support because she lacks the aura of a top hindi film heroine or a top all rounder actress . So she is playing it extremely smart in her capacity. Now there is also this controversial biopic of maa anand sheela in her pipeline since many years which is being produced by karan and she'll continue getting the best script out of the top 3 scripts in several production houses in a given time . If they are small ones then karan will bankroll them . Even her hollywood career is going to be hyped on her acting and roles because that's all she can do .

Ps I don't hate anyone these are facts