NEW DELHI: Haryanvi singing sensation Sapna Chaudhary, who recently announced her political plunge by donning saffron, has been drafted as one of the star campaigners for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for the forthcoming Assembly elections in Delhi and Jharkhand.
The crooner, who is a rage on YouTube, complained to the BJP leadership that she had been ‘ignored’ during the canvassing phase for the recent polls in her home state.
A BJP functionary in Delhi said Chaudhary had been upset over being sidelined in the run-up to and during the Haryana polls.“While being persuaded last week to not campaign for Gopal Kanda, a rival candidate (for the Haryana polls), she was assured that she would feature prominently in the party’s election campaign in Delhi and Jharkhand,” the leader said.
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Chaudhary, who joined the saffron party in July, had released a video seeking support for Kanda, a Haryana Lokhit Party candidate from the Sirsa assembly seat. She said she was also planning to hold a road show in his favour.
Jittery over her plan to canvas for a rival, the BJP leadership got the party’s city Manoj Tiwari to get in touch with her and talk her out of it. The Bhojpuri actor-turned-politician, who played a significant role in getting the singer to embrace saffron, eventually managed to spare BJP the blushes.
“She was livid with a section of party leaders. She made her misgivings known to Tiwari as well. She said she was under the impression that she could campaign for Kanda, as she was informed by her staff that he was an ‘independent candidate’. However, Tiwari explained that since she had joined the BJP, she couldn’t go canvassing for rivals,” an office-bearer of Delhi BJP said.
Chaudhary set off a feverish buzz about her joining the Congress before the Lok Sabha elections after reports that she was considering linking her lot with the grand old party. Her rumoured meeting with Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra lent further grist to buzz that she might be handed a ticket to contest the Mathura Lok Sabha seat. A photograph of the said meeting also surfaced on the social media. However, the singer said it was an old picture.
Donning saffron and how
After the LS polls, Chaudhary formally joined the BJP amid much fanfare during the party’s membership campaign at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, in the presence of Tiwari, former Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan and former party general secretary (organisation) Ram Lal.