2-hour wait for 2-minute speech

Gurdaspur

BJP candidate and actor Sunny Deol made the audience wait for nearly two hours in scorching heat for a two-minute speech in which he failed to take up even a single issue pertaining to the constituency, but nevertheless managed to engage the crowd with popular dialogues from his old films.

Even leaders of his own party later admitted that the actor’s speech on his political debut carried “a lot of punch punctuated by plucky dialogues, but lacked vision.”

Wearing a yellow turban and blue ‘kurta’, Deol, who arrived to a tumultuous applause, played to the gallery by choosing to recite some of his well-known dialogues. His poll managers were expecting a 30,000-plus crowd, but probably some bad planning meant the figure remained around 5,000-plus or minus a few hundred, said party sources.

“The main reason for the low turnout was that the event was held amid scorching sun. We thought the actor and his entourage, which comprised three union ministers, would arrive at the venue around 10.30 am when the weather was relatively cool. However, Deol decided to file his papers before coming to

the event and this development caused the delay. A

lot many people left before he came,” said a leader close to the actor.

Kamal Sharma, party in-charge of the parliamentary constituency, and some other leaders tried to impress upon Deol to raise concerns relating to the locals. However, the actor decided to go his own way and managed to immediately connect with the audience through his one-liners. The by now legendary ‘Dhai kilo ka haath’ also found a place in the scheme of things and was lapped up by the youth.

He started by asking “Thuhanu aaj ziada garmi tan nahi lag rahee?” (Hope you are not feeling the heat). To this, the crowd roared a loud ‘Nahi lag rahee’ (no). He then told the gathering that “he was one of them and would stay in Gurdaspur if they voted for him.”

Again a high-decibel roar went up. By the time the audience had become receptive, after being restless following a long wait, Deol abruptly ended his speech. “If Sunny does not start addressing local issues, and there are many of them, battle scarred Congress leaders of the constituency like sitting MP Sunil Jakhar, Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa and Tripat Rajinder Singh Bajwa will tear into him,” said a senior leader.

Earlier, the actor filed his nomination at the office of Deputy Commissioner Vipul Ujwal. He was accompanied among others by Vinod Khanna’s widow Kavita Khanna, businessman Swaran Singh Salaria, brother Bobby Deol and state party president Shwait Malik.

All fluff, no substance: Jakhar

It was all fluff and no substance. This shows Deol is better suited to what he does the best—acting—while the fact remains that he is a political novice. He inadvertently has sent a message to the electorate that he knows nothing about the problems plaguing the border constituency. We were expecting that he would address at least some problems, if not all, but that wasn’t to be.— Sunil Jakhar, Gurdaspur MP