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Amitabh Bachchan
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Mumbai, June 4: Amitabh Bachchan has volunteered to do a road safety campaign for Maharashtra but the ruling Congress, whose high command has uneasy relations with the actor, seems to be having second thoughts after an initial positive reaction.
No decision has been taken yet, but alternative names such as those of Sachin Tendulkar and Shah Rukh Khan have been floated.
Bachchan had tweeted his offer on May 29 after an accident on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway killed 27 people. On June 2, the minister of state for home, Satej Patil of the Congress, wrote to the actor suggesting the state government would be glad to accept his help.
However, the next day, Mumbai Congress vice-president Charan Singh Sapra wrote to chief minister Prithviraj Chavan citing two objections. One, a younger celeb would be better and two, the actor is brand ambassador for riot-tainted Narendra Modi’s Gujarat.
Asked if the real reason wasn’t the Congress’s allergy to Bachchan, Sapra, a known Gandhi family loyalist, today said: “Bachchan may have tweeted and volunteered. Tomorrow, Dawood may tweet something; will you invite him to be your brand ambassador?”
Sapra is a legislative council member and convener of the annual Rajiv Gandhi Awards. His letter to Chavan had said the campaign needed to target mainly the “younger generation” who are “more enthused or inspired by the younger icons like Sachin Tendulkar, Akshay Kumar, Shah Rukh Khan, Ajay Devgn, Salman Khan, Ranbir Kapoor, Aamir Khan among others”.
Bachchan, who had tweeted after receiving Patil’s letter that the state government’s response was “most appreciated”, is yet to respond.
Last month, the actor had posted news clippings of a rise in tourist traffic to Gujarat after his campaign and tweeted: “feeling proud, and good about this! Cynics, critics, antagonists, take a walk!!”
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