Following his father’s footsteps, actor Sunny Deol joins BJP. Sunny Deol will be contesting the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections from Gurdaspur. Adding to the star power,Sunny Deol is the second Bollywood actor to contest this year’s General Elections from this region, the other being Kirron Kher. Kher is contesting from Chandigarh. She defeated Pawan Kumar Bansal, who represented Chandigarh as an MP since the past 15 years, in the 16th Lok Sabha Elections.
Sunny Deol is famous for his powerful performance in movies like Border, Betab, Ghayal, Gadar Ek Prem Katha, Ghatak etc. He and his father, Dharmendra, a Jat Sikh from Punjab, have a large following in Punjab and Gurdaspur being a predominantly Jat Sikh dominated Lok Sabha constituency, may suit him.
Interestingly, Sunny Deol is the third from his family to join politics and become a member of BJP. Hema Malini who is contesting the Lok Sabha Elections from Mathura, and his father, Dharmendra, being the other two. Dharmendra represented Bikaner as an MP in the 14th Lok Sabha Elections.
The way my father (film star Dharmendra) was attached with Atal ji, today I have come to join Modi ji… Whatever I can do for this family (BJP), I will do it… I won’t talk, I will show you through my work,”Sunny Deol said.
Senior BJP leaders, Piyush Goyal and Nirmala Sitharaman, welcomed Sunny Deol open heartedly. Defence Minister Sitharaman stated, ”The moment we got to know that he is coming to the party, I can only relate to the film Border he had made, post which the impact on the Indian audience of such a theme was really proven… The feeling of nationalism and patriotism, when so beautifully evoked through a film, can really touch the core of Indian citizen,”.
Coming to Gurdaspur, the city shares a strong connection with Bollywood. Late Vinod Khanna, a famous film star, was an MP of Gurdaspur 4 times. Starting from 1998, he was chosen as an MP for three consecutive terms and then made a strong comeback in the year 2014 after losing 2009 elections to Pratap Singh Bajwa of Congress.
Post Deol joining BJP, the internet was flooded with hilarious memes where his famous movie dialogues served as a source of inspiration. As of now more than sixty movie actors have joined politics. Jaya Bachchan, Kamal Hassan, Mithun Chakraborty, Rajinikanth, Raj Babbar are a few of them.
Deol is expected to play the same aggressive role in politics which he plays in movies.
