new Delhi: Actor-turned-politician Shatrughan Sinha on Monday expressed his gratitude to Trinamool Congress (TMC) party president Mamata Banerjee for declaring her as the candidate for the Asansol Lok Sabha seat and said he wanted to take his party’s slogan ‘khela hobe’. On) nationwide.
Also, Sinha rubbished the allegations of being an “outsider” leveled by the opponents. Sinha has been a member of Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha twice.
“Mamata Banerjee holds the future of the country. I will strengthen her hand in expanding ‘Khela Hobe’ across the country,” Sinha was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.
“Khela Hobe” was a battle given by Banerjee in the fiercely contested assembly elections in West Bengal last year, which was won by the TMC in a resounding manner.
She said, “I am honored by Mamata Banerjee herself to announce my name as TMC candidate from Asansol in the Lok Sabha bypolls.
“She is a tried, tested and successful politician who holds hope for the future of the country against the ‘divisive politics’ being run by the then government,” Sinha told PTI.
Sinha was a minister in the National Democratic Alliance government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee and later quit the BJP and contested the 2019 Lok Sabha elections from Patna Sahib on a Congress ticket. He lost to Ravi Shankar Prasad in this election. Banerjee has made him a candidate in the by-election to be held on the Asansol seat.
“I am no less a Bengali than any other Bengali. I am no outsider. Bengali language has been my love of Bengali culture. I have done many films in Bengali language from Goutam Ghosh’s “Antarjali Jatra” to Shakti Samanta’s “Mustan” He said that what I speak is not a dubbed language.
“How can someone call me an ‘outsider’? Like my ‘janmabhoomi’ (place of birth) Bihar, Bengal has always been my weakness,” he argued.
“Also, Asansol has a cosmopolitan population, where apart from my dear Bengali people, citizens of Bihar, Jharkhand and elsewhere are residing in large numbers. If I am called an ‘outsider’ in Asansol, would you be the Prime Minister? Will you say the same for contesting elections from Varanasi? he said.
Sinha’s remarks come amid tussles with resistance from the BJP, which has asked whether the Trinamool Congress, which won the assembly elections on the election board of ‘Bengaliana’ (Bengali social virtue), nominated a “boycott” from the Lok Sabha seat in the state. Is. ,
“I am a pan-India personality in terms of popularity, in terms of work. I have been blessed by people from all over the country, from Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh to Haryana and Punjab, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Bengal.
The “insider-outsider” joke in West Bengal gained strength ahead of the state elections, while the ruling TMC designated the BJP as an “outsider’s party”.
Whenever asked why he unexpectedly quit the Congress, Sinha declined to comment.
The actor-turned-politician, known for his signature dialogue Khamosh, said, “I don’t want to comment on it right now. Because now the focus is on winning the Asansol seat.”
On his choice of TMC, he said, “One should go in a new and better direction to do something good for the country.”
Sinha said that despite being in the alternative party, he had good relations with Banerjee.
“Despite being a BJP MP, I attended his opposition rally at Brigade ‘Maidan’ (ground) in Kolkata in 2019. I have always appreciated his dynamic leadership and it was a privilege to work in the party led by him. Will be.” said Sinha.
Former Union minister Yashwant Sinha had joined Banerjee’s party before the eve of the Bengal elections and currently Shatrughan Sinha will join her as part of the TMC’s efforts to challenge the BJP in the 2024 general elections.
(with PTI inputs)