President Ram Nath Kovind appoints actor Paresh Rawal as chairman of National School of Drama

Actor and former BJP MP Paresh Rawal was on Thursday appointed as the Chairman of the National School of Drama (NSD), the leading theatre training institute in the country.

President Ram Nath Kovind appointed well known actor Paresh Rawal as the Chairman of the National School of Drama, Culture Minister Prahlad Singh Patel said.

The post had been vacant since August 2017 when the tenure of Ratan Thiyam, an accomplished playwright and director from Manipur, came to an end. Rajasthani poet and playwright Arjun Dev Charan has been the acting Chairman since 2018.

Rawal, who has a 35-year career in Bollywood, is known for his roles in cult comedy ‘Andaz Apna Apna’ and the portrayal of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel in the biopic ‘Sardar’.

He took the political plunge in 2014 by winning the Ahmedabad East Lok Sabha seat as a BJP candidate. However, he bid a goodbye to electoral politics five years later, but remains a “loyal BJP worker”.

“I am not interested in a political career,” he had said last year, making it clear that he had conveyed to the BJP leadership that he was not keen to contest the Lok Sabha elections again.