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BJP leaders make beeline for special screening of The Accidental Prime Minister
A number of senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders, including Railways Minister Piyush Goyal, MP Meenakshi Lekhi and Delhi BJP president Manoj Tiwari, attended a special screening of The Accidental Prime Minister in Delhi Thursday.
Other guests included BJP leader Vijender Gupta and his wife, and former Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLA Kapil Mishra.
The movie, which released Friday, seeks to depict former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as a victim of dynasty politics in the Congress. It stars actor Anupam Kher as the former prime minister, and is based on a book by Sanjaya Baru, who served as Singh’s media adviser from 2004 to 2008.
The movie, which was plugged on Twitter by the official BJP handle, has been labeled by the Congress as a propaganda tool, especially on account of its release just months before the 2019 Lok Sabha election.
Reviews of the movie so far, though, have not been favourable. While NDTV called it “Indescribably Vapid” and gave it 1.5 stars, The Indian Express has not given the movie a single star and termed it a “shoddy propaganda film”.
Also read: BJP’s incidental connections to ‘The Accidental Prime Minister’
No takers for book in Sanjaya Baru’s honour
After the release of The Accidental Prime Minister, the film based on his 2014 memoir, Sanjaya Baru is in demand again.
A Jaipur-based thinktank called Consumer Unity & Trust Society (CUTS) now wants to compile a Festschrift, a collection of writings in honour of a scholar, for Baru, who served as media adviser to former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh between 2004 and 2008.
For this, the head of CUTS has been getting in touch with several of Baru’s former colleagues, among others, but, as it turns out, few seem willing to come on board.