Onscreen Ram Arun Govil joins BJP, takes dig at Mamata

New Delhi, March 18 More than three decades after essaying the role of Lord Ram in Ramanand Sagar's epic TV serial 'Ramayan', actor Arun Govil joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the national capital on Thursday in the presence of its national General Secretary Arun Singh and Union minister Debasree Chaudhuri.

Welcoming Govil into the BJP, Singh said the actor has joined the party after being influenced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's policies. "He (Govil) played the character of Lord Ram in 'Ramayan', which was watched by over 7.7 crore people when the show was retelecast during the lockdown last year," Singh said.

After joining the BJP, Govil said that West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is allergic to the chanting of 'Jai Shri Ram'.

"Some people are not ready to understand. Mamata Banerjee has some sort of allergy to 'Jai Shri Ram'. She has to understand that Lord Ram is our ideal. Her opposition to the chanting of 'Jai Shri Ram' is a trigger point which forced me to join politics," Govil said.

When asked why he joined politics so late when some of his co-stars in 'Ramayan' had joined the party earlier, Govil said that destiny has a fixed time for everything, adding that the other actors had joined the BJP when they were at the peak of their careers, while he joined politics almost 33 years after 'Ramayan' went off-screen in 1988.

Govil's co-star Dipika Chikhlia, who played the character of Sita in 'Ramayan', joined the BJP and won from the Baroda Lok Sabha constituency in 1991. Another of his co-actors, Arvind Trivedi, who portrayed the role of Ravana in the hit serial, had also joined the BJP and won the Lok Sabha polls from Sabarkantha in Gujarat in 1991.

( With inputs from IANS )