New Delhi: Gurdaspur MP and actor Sunny Deol, who has come under growing criticism for virtually abandoning his constituency since his win in 2019, has ruled out a re-election bid, saying he does not want to contest polls in the future as he is not “cut out for politics”.
The BJP MP, who has clocked 18 per cent attendance in the Lok Sabha, against the 79 per cent national average, also downplayed his absence from the House session after session, saying he was dismayed by the “behaviour” of MPs cutting across party lines.
“I don’t want to contest elections anymore. I will remain an actor and continue to serve the country like I have always done,” Deol told TV news channel Aaj Tak in an interview Monday.
“I sincerely believe that what I can give to the youth of this country is by being a good actor and bringing out good projects,” he said.
ThePrint reached the Gurdaspur MP via calls and messages for a comment, but hadn’t received a response till the time of publication.
Deol — who is currently basking in the success of his latest release Gadar 2, a sequel to the 2001 blockbuster based on the Partition — sought to justify his dismal record as an MP by taking the moral high ground.
Asked if he felt that he is “too good for politics”, Deol replied, with a smile, “I would say that.” He added, “I don’t want to do what I am not cut out for.”
“When I go there (Lok Sabha), I see people who run the country are sitting there, from every party. But how do they behave? And then we tell others not to behave that way,” he said. “I am not made like that, so it’s better if I go somewhere else where I can enjoy.”
In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Deol had defeated Sunil Jakhar, who was then contesting on a Congress ticket, by margin of 82,459 votes.
However, last year, his prolonged absence from the area led to the emergence of posters in the constituency proclaiming him “missing”.
Gurdaspur has been battered by floods this monsoon, but Deol has been missing in action. When he visited Amritsar early August to promote Gadar 2, he flew back to Mumbai.
According to PRS Legislative Research, Deol has not participated in any Lok Sabha debate so far, and has asked only one question — on illegal sand mining in rivers.
During the farm laws protests led by Punjab farmers, Deol’s involvement seemed limited to sharing social media posts endorsing the Centre’s position.
In the face of the criticism, however, Deol remains unfazed. “The thing is, you can do one job at a time, not many. Yes, I joined politics, I thought things happen in a certain way. But what I have realised [is] that the way things work here, I can do as an actor as well. I don’t like the feeling of not being able to do something after making promises,” Deol told Aaj Tak.
Also Read: Sunny Deol’s Parliament flop: Low attendance, no bills & just 1 question in 3.5 years as MP
‘Politics doesn’t suit our family’
In a lighter vein, Deol said he feels that politics “does not suit our family”.
His father, the yesteryear superstar Dharmendra, also faced criticism for his poor record as a lawmaker between 2004 and 2009, when he represented the Bikaner constituency in the Lok Sabha as a BJP MP.
Even then, ‘missing’ posters had come up in Bikaner, which became a reserved constituency in 2009 following delimitation.
Fellow Bollywood star Hema Malini, who is Dharmendra’s wife and Deol’s stepmother, also doesn’t have an inspiring record as a parliamentarian.
The BJP is reportedly miffed with its Mathura MP for unilaterally announcing in June — while interacting with reporters — that she is open to the idea of a re-election bid, but “will contest from Mathura only, not any other seat”. Malini will turn 75 in October, an unwritten age ceiling in the BJP for political retirement.
According to PRS, which collates data from Lok Sabha records, Malini’s attendance stands at 49 per cent. She has participated in 17 percent of the debates, against the national average of 42.7 per cent, and posed 94 questions, compared to the national average of 191.
The BJP, which doesn’t have much following among the Jatt Sikhs, had opted for Sunny Deol in 2019 elections to successfully woo the community. That was the same reason it chose Dharmendra for Jat-dominated Bikaner. The BJP fielded Hema Malini, a ‘Jat bahu’, from Mathura in 2019, since the community is influential in the Lok Sabha constituency.
(Edited by Sunanda Ranjan)
Also Read: Sunny Deol, action hero MP, is missing in action in Gurdaspur & farmers are booing him