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Popular Bengali actor joins BJP, another movie veteran and TMC MLA wants to quit
A day after Bengal’s most popular actor and Bollywood veteran Mithun Chakraborty made headlines by hosting RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat at his Mumbai bungalow, the Bengal unit of the BJP made noticeable inroads into Tollywood, as the state’s movie industry is popularly called.
There were ripples in Bengal’s movie industry on Wednesday when Yash Dasgupta, a young and popular movie star, joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) while veteran actor and two-time Trinamool Congress (TMC) legislator Chiranjit Chakraborty wrote to chief minister Mamata Banerjee that he would quit politics if the party decided not to field him for the assembly polls to be held in March-April.
A day after Bengal’s most popular actor and Bollywood veteran Mithun Chakraborty made headlines by hosting Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat at his Mumbai bungalow, stoking speculation on his return to politics, the Bengal unit of the BJP made noticeable inroads into Tollywood, as the state’s movie industry is popularly called since most of the studios are located in south Kolkata’s Tollygunge area. Chakraborty was a Rajya Sabha member of the TMC till he resigned from the Upper House in 2016.
The BJP started to increase its presence in Tollywood soon after it won 18 of the state’s 42 Lok Sabha seats in 2019. On July 18 that year, as many as 13 actors joined the BJP in Delhi and Kolkata. While none of them are stars, all are popular faces on television or the big screen. For chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who has several actors among her former or sitting MPs and MLAs, this was embarrassing because most of those who joined the BJP criticised ruling party leaders of controlling the industry and not letting people work freely.
“I am still young in the industry but I know that politics is not a bad thing. Politics is about change. If you want to change the system you have to be part of the system. I don’t want to remain just an actor. The BJP has always put its faith in the youth. I believe that I will get the opportunity to work,” said 35-year-old Yash Dasgupta after joining the party along with more than half a dozen actors, including Papiya Adhikari, a veteran.
Dasgupta is known to be a close friend of TMC Lok Sabha member and popular star Nusrat Jahan. “Nusrat and I are good friends as actors. Our political identity has nothing to do with our friendship,” he said.
The actors were welcomed into the BJP by national vice-president Mukul Roy, national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya and Rajya Sabha member Swapan Dasgupta at the party’s new media centre set up at a star-hotel in south Kolkata.
“The BJP is not contesting the Bengal polls merely to capture power. We want to revive Bengal’s old glory that showed the path to the rest of the nation,” said Vijayvargiya.
In an almost parallel development, Chiranjit Chakraborty, the TMC’s sitting legislator from Barasat in North 24 Parganas and who shared screen space with Mithun Chakraborty in several movies, told television channels that he had informed the chief minister about his desire to quit politics and return to acting if the party decides not to field him again.
“When I was fielded for the first time in 2011, I told her that I do not belong to the world of politics. I did not want to contest in 2016 as well but she insisted that I must. I want to make it clear that I will never join any other party if I quit politics,” he said.
Interestingly, speculations started since Tuesday about Prasenjit Chatterjee, another famous and award-winning actor.
Anirban Ganguly, a senior member of the BJP’s think tank, met Chatterjee, the state’s most popular face among senior actors and son of former Bollywood superstar Biswajit, at the latter’s residence and presented the actor a copy of his book on Amit Shah. Since Biswajit joined the BJP in Delhi in January 2019, the meeting stoked rumours that his son, too, might join the saffron camp.
Ganguly said the meeting had nothing to do with politics. “I met him at a personal level. Prasenjit is an icon in Bengal. Not everything should be judged from the political point of view. He has great regard for the Prime Minister and the Union home minister. We often meet eminent people only to interact and exchange views. Amit Shah started this,” Ganguly told HT.
Till Wednesday evening, no TMC leader reacted to so many actors joining the BJP.
