As BJP banks on tinsel town charm, entry of popular actors adds drama to poll arena

The BJP which has set a target for 400 seats for the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, has invested a great deal of faith in popular film personalities.

Even though the party has replaced as many as 33 sitting MPs to accommodate new faces, it has decided to retain some of the sitting celebrity MPs and introduce actors like Kangana Ranaut and Arun Govil to the poll arena.

Here’s a list of celeb candidates that the BJP has announced so far:

Kangana Ranaut (Mandi)

The BJP has fielded Bollywood actor Kangana Ranaut from the Mandi parliamentary constituency in Himachal Pradesh.

Born in Bhambla in Mandi district, Kangana, an actor, producer and four-time National Award winner was awarded with the Padma Shri in 2020.

Kangana, who in the past few years has made no bones about her full-throttled support for the Narendra Modi-led government as well as the BJP, was among the top celebrities from the film industry who were invited to attend the consecration ceremony of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya this year.

Mandi is one of the four Lok Sabha seats in Himachal Pradesh, the other three being Shimla, Kangra and Hamirpur. The BJP won all the seats in the 2019 polls. The Congress is yet to announce its candidate for Mandi.

Arun Govil (Meerut)

Actor Arun Govil, who became a household name in the late 80s for playing Lord Ram in Ramanand Sagar’s TV adaptation of the Ramayan, has been fielded by the BJP from the Meerut Lok Sabha seat.

Govil, a native of Meerut, has replaced Rajendra Agarwal, who won the election thrice (2009, 2014, 2019) from the Lok Sabha seat. His nomination is being seen as an apparent bid by the BJP to cash in on his ‘Ram’ image and his status as a local.

The Samajwadi Party (SP) after changing its candidate twice for the constituency has finally settled on the name of Sunita Verma. It had earlier nominated Bhanu Pratap Singh and later replaced him with Atul Pradhan.

It will be a three-pronged battle in Meerut with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) pitting Devvrit Tyagi against Govil and Verma. Polling will be held in the second phase on April 26.

Hema Malini (Mathura)

Bollywood’s ‘dream girl’ Hema Malini has filed her nomination papers for a third term as MP from the Mathura constituency.

The Congress has prepared the ground for a dramatic contest by fielding former boxer Vijender Singh against Malini. The Congress is banking on Singh’s celebrity status and his caste to strike a chord with the influential Jat community.

Seventy-five-year Malini, who has had an illustrious career in the film industry, besides being a professional Bharatnatyam dancer, has been a two-time MLA from the constituency.

It will be one of the interesting battles in Uttar Pradesh to see a dancer and a boxer duel for votes.

Suresh Gopi (Thrissur)

The BJP has announced the name of Malayalam actor and former Rajya Sabha member Suresh Gopi from the Thrissur Lok Sabha constituency.

Gopi, a popular action hero of the 90s, had unsuccessfully contested from the Thrissur Lok Sabha seat in 2019. In 2021, the BJP had fielded him again in the Thrissur seat in the assembly elections. While he lost both the polls, Gopi’s voting percentage improved, prompting the party to field him again this time around.

While LDF has fielded VS Sunil Kumar, the UDF has named K Muraleedharan from the constituency. The Congress’ move to shift Muraleedharan from the Vatakara Lok Sabha seat to Thrissur is seen as a strategic move to thwart any chances of Gopi, who has been working in the constituency for five years, of winning the polls.

The Thrissur seat is at present held by Congress MP TN Prathapan.

Manoj Tiwari (North East Delhi)

The BJP has once again fielded Bhojpuri actor and singer turned politician Manoj Tiwari from the North East Delhi seat.

A two-time MP from the constituency, Tiwari, the current president of BJP’s Delhi unit, is the only sitting parliamentarian of the saffron party to be given a ticket from Delhi.

While the Congress (which will contest three seats in Delhi, leaving the four others to AAP) is yet to decide its candidate for the North East Delhi constituency, speculations are rife that it may field Sandeep Dikshit, son of former Delhi chief minister Shiela Dikshit against Tiwari.

In 2019, the BJP won all the seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi.

Locket Chatterjee (Hooghly)

The Hooghly constituency of Lok Sabha in West Bengal will see a clash between two former cine stars with the Trinamool Congress pitting Rachna Banerjee against BJP candidate and sitting MP Locket Chatterjee.

Locket, a former actress and classical dancer, had a career in film and television spanning two decades. She was last seen in 2020 Bengali film Sannyasi Deshonayok. She made a foray into politics by joining the Trinamool Congress, but later switched to the BJP in 2015. After an unsuccessful stint in the assembly polls in 2016, she won the Lok Sabha seat from Hooghly with an impressive 6 lakh plus votes after defeating Ratna De Nag.

Rachana, an actress who made waves with her performances in both Bengali and Odia films in the 90s, and was also cast opposite Amitabh Bachchan in 1999 film Sooryavansham, is well known among Bengali audience today for her reality TV show Didi No.1.

Ravi Kishan (Gorakhpur)

Already basking in the plaudits he has been receiving for his role in Kiran Rao’s Laapata Ladies and Netflix webseries Maamla Legal Hai, Ravi Kishan was in for another treat when he was re-nominated from the Gorakhpur Lok Sabha seat by the BJP.

Born as Ravindra Shyamnarayan Shukla in Mumbai (then Bombay), Ravi lived in his native place Kerakat in Jaunpur district of Uttar Pradesh for seven years.

Besides being an acclaimed actor in Bhojpuri and Hindi cinema, Ravi has also dabbled in the Telugu, Kannada and Tamil film industries.

In 2008, he gave the voice over to Tobey Maguire’s Spiderman character in Spider Man-3. This was the first time a Bollywood blockbuster was being dubbed in Bhojpuri.

Ravi entered active politics in 2014, and contested the General Elections from the Jaunpur seat of Uttar Pradesh the same year, but lost. He joined the BJP three years later. In 2019 he contested the Lok Sabha elections from Gorakhpur against Samajwadi Party’s Rambhual Nishad and won.

Calling it the “hottest seat” in Uttar Pradesh after Kashi (Varanasi, the parliamentary seat of Prime Minister Narendra Modi), Ravi promised that he will “maintain this trust”.

Gorakhpur is a stronghold of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.

The INDIA alliance and BSP are yet to announce their candidates from the seat.