Sharing her views on Rahul Gandhi, actor Kangana Ranaut, who will contest the upcoming Lok Sabha polls on the BJP’s ticket from Mandi in her home state, Himachal Pradesh, said that things were ‘forced upon’ the Congress MP, implying that he became a politician against his wishes.
“I think he is put under intense pressure repeatedly, irrespective of whether he can do that task or not. He will be 60 in a few years’ time, yet, time and again, he is launched as a ‘young leader’,” Ranaut told Aaj Tak in an exclusive interview.
The actor further described Gandhi as a ‘victim of dynastic politics.’
She said: “I think that he (Gandhi) is a victim of his own circumstances. Children become victims of nepotism. What if he wants to do something else, become an actor, for example? He can be an actor. In the film industry, I have seen people who are being pressurised by their parents (to join the industry). Their lives have been ruined.”
In the Lok Sabha polls, Rahul Gandhi will contest from Kerala’s Wayanad, from where he is the sitting MP. In the previous 2019 polls, he was defeated by the BJP’s Smriti Irani in his family’s erstwhile bastion of Uttar Pradesh’s Amethi, from where he made his electoral debut in 2004, and won two more terms (2009, 2014).
Meanwhile, on Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, the ex-Congress chief’s younger sibling, Ranaut reiterated what she said about the Wayanad MP.
“I like them both (Rahul and Priyanka). It looks like they have troubled lives…they deserve a happy life. It’s not too late…their mother (Sonia Gandhi) must guide them,” she remarked.
Priyanka Gandhi Vadra began her political career in 2019, ahead of general elections that year, and is a Congress general secretary. She has never contested an election, and party leaders from Uttar Pradesh want her to stand from Rae Bareli, a seat recently vacated by Sonia Gandhi who is now in the Rajya Sabha.
The article originally appeared on Hindustan Times.
