Bollywood Actor Sonu Sood has received unparalleled praise and media coverage over his efforts to send the stranded migrant workers and labourers to their respective homes.
While many have said that he has emerged as a ‘Mahatma’ for stranded migrants during the lockdown, some claim that Sood’s act of assisting migrants is not selfless but has a political outlook.
Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut on Sunday raised questions over the credibility of Sood’s campaign and wondered whether there was a political director behind the same.
In his Sunday column, ‘Rokhtok’ published in Shiv Sena mouthpiece ‘Saamana’, Raut wondered whether what Sood has done could be achieved without political backing. Sood has managed to arrange for buses and flights during the lockdown when many state governments were found helpless, he said.
The column titled “Ekta Sonu Sood Khara” (Alone Sonu Sood is real) said that the actor arranged a special plane to Bhubaneshwar in Odisha to send 177 girls who were stuck in Kerala’s Ernakulam. The special plane came from Bangaluru to Kochi as Sood wasn’t able to find the same in Kerala, it said while adding that this was not possible without political as well as administrative backing.
Raut, in his column, implied that the BJP was behind helping the actor and “Mahatma” Sood was likely to be the future star campaigner of the BJP. The Shiv Sena leader said that Sood was running a parallel government and was getting whatever he wanted.
The Maharashtra government has formed a separate cell to send migrant workers home. Raut said that Sood’s campaign to send migrants back home was being deliberately organised to create an image that the government is doing nothing.
"...Political machinery was behind it," the Shiv Sena leader said while informing that Rashtriya Banjara Sewa Sangh chief Shankar Pawar was behind it but was merely a face.
Raut said that West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath were not ready to take migrants back home. “So, how was Sood able to help the workers and where did they reach?” he asked.
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