Asansol: Why Pawan Singh pulled out of LS race day after being nominated by BJP

Bhojpuri singer-actor Pawan Singh, who was nominated as the BJP candidate from Asansol constituency in West Bengal, has suddenly withdrawn his name from the Lok Sabha poll contest without citing any particular reason.

His candidacy to the Asansol seat was announced just a day before on March 2 by the BJP.  Singh was a surprise nomination for the Asansol seat, which has a sizable migrant population and lies in the coal mine belt of West Burdwan district, said reports.

Expressing his inability to contest from Asansol “due to some reason”, Singh announced on social media platform X: “I express my heartfelt gratitude to the top leadership of Bharatiya Janata Party. The party trusted me and declared me as the candidate from Asansol but due to some reason I will not be able to contest the elections from Asansol…”

Vulgar depiction of women

According to reports, the BJP received a lot of flak for Pawan Singh's candidature. His critics alleged that his songs were extremely crude and depicted women, including those from the state, in a vulgar way.

The BJP had fielded the singer hoping that he would effectively take on sitting MP, the Bollywood veteran Shatrughan Sinha. The actor-politician, who had been with the BJP for many years is currently with the Trinamool Congress, who he had joined in 2019.

Outrage in political circles

Pawan Singh's nomination sparked off a huge controversy and outrage in political circles. Many political party leaders slammed the content created by the singer and songs allegedly denigrating ‘Bengali women’.

Congress leader and senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi posted on social media, “My head bends in shame after looking at the content created and propagated by BJP’s Asansol Lok Sabha candidate. The doom’s day of democracy is quite near!”

Trinamool Congress Minister and former Asansol MP Babul Supriyo also took to social media and said that the way Pawan Singh offends Bengali women and paints them in an utterly disrespectful light in film titles and songs reveals BJP’s insensitivity towards women.

Hum Hasina Bengali ki

Sagarika Ghosh, Rajya Sabha MP also tweeted lashing out at BJP's move, along with a video of Pawan Singh’s song, showing a woman dancing in a suggestive manner and singing, 'Hum Hasina Bengalki'.

She mocked the BJP saying that the Asansol candidate’s video depicts the woman of Bengal as in below par. "Will such a person be sitting as a legislator in Parliament?" she asked.

For the past few years, celebrities have been representing the Asansol seat.

Earlier, crooner Babul Supriyo won the seat twice in 2014 and in 2019 for the BJP. But he subsequently defected to the TMC and it was actor Singh who won the by-election at Asansol in April 2022 with a margin of over three lakh votes.

After all the criticism, the BJP apparently decided to edge out Singh, especially because the saffron party is focussed on taking on the TMC with the Sandeshkhali controversy in the upcoming elections. The row in Sandeshkhali has largely to do with the local women, who protested against TMC leader Shahjahan Sheikh and his associates, accusing them of land grabbing and sexual assault.

Most of the women in Sandeshkhali celebrated when controversial TMC leader Shahjahan Sheikh and his cronies were arrested and said that they are now free to vote for whoever they want setting off alarm bells for the TMC.