Bollywood film star Sunny Deol joins BJP

NEW DELHI: Actor Sunny Deol will join the ruling BJP today, days after he met with party president Amit Shah. He is likely to be the BJP candidate from Gurdaspur in Punjab. After the meeting last week, which fuelled huge speculation, Sunny Deol had been non-committal.

“I heard about the rumours of joining politics. I just met him (Amit Shah) and we took a photograph, Sunny Deol said.

The BJP has formed an alliance with Shiromani Akali Dal and is fighting three of the 13 parliamentary seats in Punjab: Amritsar, Gurdaspur and Hoshiarpur.

Gurdaspur was the constituency of veteran actor Vinod Khanna, who died in 2017. There was a buzz for some time that the BJP may field his wife Kavita Khanna or son Akshaye Khanna from there.

Sunny Deol, 62, is best known for his action hero roles in films like “Ghayal”, “Gadar: Ek Prem Katha”, “Damini” and “Border”.

He is the third Deol to join politics – and the BJP – after Dharmendra and his wife Hema Malini, also veteran actors.

Dharmendra had a brief stint in politics about 10 years ago, when he contested the 2004 national election from Rajasthan’s Bikaner on a BJP ticket and won. Hema Malini is fighting for re-election from Uttar Pradesh’s Mathura.