Film stars bring glamour, votes to parties this election

With the date for the Lok Sabha elections fast approaching, political parties are ensuring that they are doing all they can to attract voters.

In addition to mass leaders and their political entourage, parties have resorted to film stars from Hindi, Kannada and Telugu film industries to campaign for them.

Janata Dal (Secular) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) seem to have employed this tactic extensively. In the last 15 days, the JD(S) has hosted a number of roadshows in Shimoga and Bangalore with film stars in their caravan.

In Shimoga, while Shivarajkumar campaigned for his wife Geetha, his close colleague Upendra also joined forces in seeking votes for her. On Thursday, film star Aindrita Ray also joined the JD(S) bandwagon, seeking votes for Geetha in Shimoga.

In Bijapur, JD(S) candidate K Shivram has tried his hand at getting star power to attract voters in Bijapur by roping in Duniya Vijay to campaign for him.

On Friday, Bollywood star and son-in-law of JD(S) Bangalore Central candidate Nandini Alva, Vivek Oberoi is scheduled to embark on a two-day roadshow across the City.
JD(S) spokesperson stated that all the film stars are campaigning for their candidates due to a personal rapport with them.

Elsewhere, the BJP in Kolar constituency is using film actress Rakshitha to campaign for their candidate M Narayanswamy. It is said that the party is thinking of roping in Tollywood stars Pawan Kalyan and Nagarjuna to campaign for the party in Kolar, where it does not have a strong vote base. Kalyan and Nagarjuna are both known to be in favour of the BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi and are likely to campaign for the party in Andhra Pradesh.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is trying to get their ranks bolstered with personalities from Bollywood. The AAP is expecting their candidate from Chandigarh, film star Gul Panag to campaign in Karnataka for the next five days.

With the polls in Chandigarh completed on Wednesday, it is expected that Panag will campaign in Bangalore for a day or two. This apart, the AAP is expecting prominent playback singer Vishal Dadlani to entertain urban voters in the City over the next week.