After Amitabh Bachchan, Abhishek sidelined in earth hour event

The awkward situations involving the Bachchans and the Congress are becoming regular, notwithstanding the party’s assertion that its high command, Sonia Gandhi, does not allow personal equations to reflect on her politics. A day after posters of actor Abhishek Bachchan were hurriedly removed from an event in Delhi where chief minister Sheila Dikshit was a guest, the actor’s father, Amitabh Bachchan, has hinted at a “pattern”.

On Saturday, all posters featuring Abhishek were removed from the Earth Hour event organised by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) on the India Gate lawns. A video message on the event featuring the actor was also not aired. The effort, clearly, was aimed at ensuring that the Delhi chief minister should not be seen endorsing an event that had junior Bachchan as its brand ambassador.

Coming a few days after Maharashtra chief minister Ashok Chavan found himself in a controversy for sharing the dais with the senior Bachchan in Mumbai, the incident is a pointer to how the fear of upsetting Sonia Gandhi has made the party’s leaders jittery about the Bachchans.

Dikshit, however, was spared the “embarrassment” of sharing the dais with Abhishek as the latter skipped the event ostensibly for other professional commitments.

“I was to be at the India Gate function being the brand ambassador… but prior shoot commitments would not allow me… I had sent a video message for all at the event, thanking them for their participation and support, but for some reason that couldn’t be shown,” the actor tweeted.

The organisers had put up posters featuring the actor across the capital and also aired television commercials as part of the event’s promotional campaign under which electricity was shut down in cities across the world — from 8.30pm to 9.30pm on Saturday.    
 
While WWF officials went incommunicado following the controversy, Dikshit reacted angrily claiming she had “nothing to do” with the actor’s posters being removed. “I have nothing to do with it. I went there at the invitation of WWF. I switched off the lights. I don’t know anything. I am not WWF and you go and ask them,” the CM said.

The senior Bachchan was more forthright in his disapproval of the snub. “A few hours before the show was to start, apparently the audio-visual featuring Abhishek had been asked to be removed and banner posters bearing his photograph as ambassador had been stopped from being displayed (sic),” Amitabh wrote on his blog. “Am I hallucinating, or is there a pattern in all this?”

Meanwhile, the incident has given the Bharatiya Janata Party a handle to embarrass the Congress.

“This is a very unfortunate incident and should be condemned. The personal conflict between Congress president Sonia Gandhi and the Bachchan family has taken a political tone with help of sycophants in the party. It was unbecoming of the CM to have acted this way,” said BJP veteran and leader of the opposition in Delhi assembly, VK Malhotra.