In Bollywood circles, they say if an actor's hold on the box office appears to be waning and their social media feed is full of opinions on current issues rather than holiday pictures, they are thinking of politics as Plan B. So much so that even genuine interest in the state of affairs, initiatives to serve people get doubted as a short-lived political stint.
In continuing with the trend of actors joining political parties, Chandigarh-girl Mahie Gill, also known as Dev-D actress, joins BJP in Punjab. Alongside, well-known Punjabi actor Hobby Dhaliwal joins the saffron party too.
So, who is Mahie Gill?
While Gill made her Bollywood debut in 2003 with the film Hawayein, she is best known for her role in Bollywood films such as Dev D, Paan Singh Tomar and Sahib, Biwi aur Gangster, Dabangg and Gulaal. She has also acted in Punjabi films such as Angrej, and the cult classic Carry on Jatta.
While the details of her political foray are yet to be made public, Mahie Gill joined the saffron party in the presence of the Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, Union Minister-Punjab BJP-in-charge Gajendra Singh Shekhawat and Punjab BJP-in-charge Dushyant Gautam.
It must be noted that Gill had campaigned for her childhood friend and Congress candidate Harmohinder Singh Lucky from Ward No 2 only in December last year. At the time, the actor said she had no plans of joining politics but did not rule out doing so in the future.
Not very active on Twitter, but the actress was quite vocal during farmers' protests and has also been a staunch critic of the BJP and PM Modi. When asked about the shift in her ideology, the actor said that she changed her mind, "after listening to the PM'S vision for Punjab." She also thought that no other party could serve Punjab better. She also added that she wanted to serve the people of Punjab, especially girls. "I want to do something for girls. I want to raise issues related to girls. Now, I have got a medium to do so." Meanwhile, the actor will be next seen in web-series Raktanchal-2.
The trend, of actors turning politicos, continues
Very few actors have been able to establish successful and long-standing political careers for themselves. Exceptions of course, like late Sunil Dutt, Shatrughan Sinha, Kamal Haasan, Jaya Prada, Smriti Irani etc, are always there.
In 2019, like each election season, a row of actors sprung on the political landscape, from Sunny Deol, Prakash Raj to Urmila Matondkar. At the time, in the outgoing Lok Sabha, however, the celebrity MPs logged lower attendance in the Parliament, asked lesser questions and held even fewer debates. The 19 celebrity MPs logged 66% attendance compared to the 16th Lok Sabha average of 80%, an IndiaSpend analysis of Parliament data showed. It further said that only 6 celebrity MPs marked attendance of 80% or above.
Bharatiya Janata Party MP and yesteryear film star Hema Malini, who ploughed a farm during election campaigning, marked a dismal 39% attendance, while actor Deepak Dev Adhikari a Bengali film actor, had a laughable figure of 11% attendance.
Better utilisation of MPLADS
However, the celebrity MPs used their constituency funds better than the average of all MPs in the 16th Lok Sabha. IndiaSpend also reported on April 6, 2019, that celebrity MPs in the sixteenth Lok Sabha utilised 85 per cent of the development funds they were allocated. Sandhya Roy reported the maximum (98.8 per cent) utilisation of MPLADs funds among the 19 celebrity MPs. While Babul Supriyo reported the least utilisation (74.1%) of the funds.
