New Delhi: Kangana Ranaut is once again on the warpath, and the latest on her path is Jaya Bachchan. Ranaut has now mocked Bachchan in an Instagram Story.
Commenting on a video of Bachchan’s interaction with a reporter at an INDIA bloc protest in New Delhi, Ranaut wrote, “When you sit on dharna so that you can make a point in front of the whole world, but when they ask you what point you want to make? Jaya B ji… ‘nahi bataungi (I won’t tell you)’.”
The comment followed a series of laughing emojis.
The video shows a reporter asking Bachchan about a placard being carried by Trinamool Congress MP Derek O’Brien. Bachchan tells him, “Don’t twist the matter.”
When he asks what the matter is, she pushes his microphone away and says, “Nahi bataungi (I won’t tell you).”
However, there was more to Bachchan’s interactions with reporters at the protest. In another exchange, she said the agitation would continue “Jab tak pair chal sakta hai (as long as our legs can carry us)”.
Asked whether the protest was a fight to save democracy and whether the Election Commission was being discriminatory, she replied, “Bilkul (Absolutely).”
The 78-year-old Rajya Sabha member was also asked what message the gathering was meant to send.
“Kya message dena hai? Itne sab log message de rahe hain, hum unmein shamil hain (What message is there to give? So many people are giving a message, we are among them),” Bachchan said.
Ranaut, a BJP MP, shared only the shorter exchange in which Bachchan refused to answer the reporter.
Bachchan, a Samajwadi Party MP, was at the Opposition protest over the functioning of the Election Commission on 6 October.
But this was not the first time the two butted heads. Ranaut and Bachchan have publicly disagreed before.
In 2020, Bachchan defended the Hindi film industry in the Rajya Sabha after actor-politician Ravi Kishan spoke about drug use in Bollywood and Ranaut described the industry as a “gutter”.
Bachchan did not name Ranaut, but said people who had made their names in the film industry were maligning it.
“Jis thali mein khate hain usmein chhed karte hain (They make holes in the plate in which they eat),” Bachchan said.
Ranaut responded directly to Bachchan. She asked what “thali” the industry had given her, adding that she had made her career herself, and accused the industry of offering women small roles and item numbers on exploitative terms.