Celebs on E Pill

As Maharashtra goes to vote today, we take a look at what turned out to be an unusually star-studded campaign for an Assembly election. Starting with Salman Khan on the campaign trail, then Bappi Lahiri, Abhijeet Sawant, Smriti Irani... We quizzed the participating celebs on elections and the state. Sure, it was a tough test. Check how they fared.

Campaigning ended on Sunday for the October 13 assembly polls in Maharashtra. The over four week-long canvassing saw top leaders of Congress, BJP and other major players of regional parties hitting the campaign trail in a big way.

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Against this backdrop, the glamour quotient was not to be left behind with several film stars campaigning for the various candidates. In fact, the presence of former cricketer Vinod Kambli, fashion designer Shaina N C and popular television host Aadesh Bandekar in the electoral fray spiced up the pre-election campaign.

Celeb candidates
Apart from the actual ‘celeb candidates’, Mumbaikars also saw Sanjay Dutt, Salman Khan, Suneil Shetty and a host of Bollywood, Marathi, Gujarati and even Bhojpuri stars leave behind their ‘reel lives’ to garner votes and raise the election’s glam quotient. In fact, Riteish Deshmukh spent most of his time last month in Latur campaigning for elder brother Amit.

All the celebrities maintained that they were campaigning for ‘friends’ and not political parties. Actor Salman Khan went on to add, “People have faith in me. But I am only campaigning. I’m not part of any party and don’t think will ever be.” Musician Bappi Lahiri admitted that he didn’t have a clue as to who the present BMC commissioner was but campaigned for the elections as the local Congress candidate was “like a brother”.

So the pertinent question that crops up on Election Day is, if these celebrities actually get the candidates those much elusive votes. And how much do they actually know about state politics?

We fielded a few questions to some of them on the who’s who and what’s what in the state polls.