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Ravi Dhaliwal
Tribune News Service
Gurdaspur, May 8
Presented by the BJP as a symbol of nationalism, the party’s Gurdaspur candidate and Bollywood star, Sunny Deol, is apparently not aware of the Balakot air strike. A video of him making an admission to that effect has gone viral.
The development is giving anxious moments to his election managers, who have been struggling against the general perception thus far that Sunny Deol is not aware of local issues. It now turns out he may not be aware of even national matters that the BJP is banking on.
In the clip, a woman reporter asks him, “Aapko lagta hai Balakot strike se desh ko kuchh fayada hua hai? (Do you think the Balakot strikes have benefited India?)” To this, Deol retorts, “Kya strike, kaunsee strike? Mujhe yeh sab kuch pata nahi hai. Mujhe to bas chunav jeetna hai (What strike? Which strike? I am not aware of all this. I am here just to win the election).”
Describing Sunny’s statement as “shocking and outrageous”, his Congress rival Sunil Jakhar said it had come as a surprise to residents of this border constituency where passions often run high every time there is any anti-Pakistan development such as the Balakot air strike.
“BJP has been working overtime to weave a narrative around the air strikes. However, the actor is killing his party’s plot. This, coming from a candidate hand-picked by the PM because of his anti-Pakistan image in films, is an unthinkable proposition. What message does the BJP intend to send to its cadres and voters by fielding such a candidate? It is better for him to go back to the film sets of Mumbai,” Jakhar said.
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