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'Party handicapped’: Haryana minister Vij on Cong’s ‘threat’ to Big B, Akshay
The BJP leader asked Congress president Sonia Gandhi to act against its Maharashtra unit chief for ‘threatening’ the two actors.
Haryana home minister Anil Vij on Friday slammed the Maharashtra unit of the Congress for ‘threatening’ actors Amitabh Bachchan and Akshay Kumar for their silence on fuel price rise, saying that the party should take action against its state unit chief for his comments on the two actors.
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“Congress wants senior stars’ help to oppose the government, so Amitabh Bachchan and Akshay Kumar are being threatened. It shows Congress is handicapped and hollow. Party chief Sonia Gandhi must apologise to Amitabh Bachchan and Akshay Kumar and take action against the Maharashtra chief,” news agency ANI quoted Vij as saying.
Nana Patole, the newly-appointed president of the Maharashtra Congress, recently questioned Bachchan and Kumar for their silence over the fuel price rise and threatened to stop the shooting and release of their films in the western state. Patole wondered why the two actors have not questioned the price rise like they did when the Congress-led coalition was in power at the Centre until 2014.
While Kumar is considered a supporter of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Bachchan has been frequently accused of not taking a stand on any important issue. The BJP is currently in power at the Centre and is the main Opposition party in Maharashtra. Vij belongs to the BJP, which has already thrown its weight behind the actors.
The controversy comes in the backdrop of the Maharashtra government, which also comprises the Congress, ordering a probe into tweets put by a number of celebrities, including Kumar, Sachin Tendulkar and Lata Mangeshkar, over the ongoing farmers’ protests in Delhi. The celebrities had put out tweets emphasising how the protests were an ‘internal matter of India,’ after several international celebrities, including pop star Rihanna, Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, and others, commented on the movement. However, Opposition parties allege that the BJP was behind the celebrities’ tweets.
Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh recently said that investigations had revealed that the BJP’s IT cell chief, Amit Malviya, and 12 other ‘influencers’ were behind the tweets.
