Shatrughan Sinha says pro-Modi tweet a 'humour'; Not leaving Congress to rejoin BJP

Patna, June 29: With his recent pro-Modi tweet seen as an attempt of "ghar wapsi" in the BJP, actor and Congress leader Shatrughan Sinha on Tuesday dismissed the speculations, saying he made the comments as a "humour" and there is no desire to change sides.

Sinha had said in his tweet in Hindi on Sunday that apart from three kinds of COVID variants, there was a fourth type of variant "of people being 'dukhi' (unhappy) with Modi without any reason".

"It was a Sunday humour for entertainment. I make some tweets for fun every Sunday and no political meaning should be derived from them. "Neither do I have any feeling to leave Congress and rejoin BJP nor a wish in this regard," the actor-politician told reporters over the phone from Mumbai.

Sinha, who served as a union minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, had left the BJP and joined the Congress on the eve of 2019 Lok Sabha polls and had unsuccessfully contested from his native Patna Sahib constituency on a Congress ticket.

Sinha popularly known as "Bihari Babu", had twice won with a handsome margin from the seat on a BJP ticket in 2009 as well as 2014.

However, he lost with a big margin to Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad from the constituency in 2019. Before walking out of the saffron party, Sinha had made several veiled remarks against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home minister Amit Shah.

He used to say that BJP has become "one-man party and two men army" without naming anybody. With the Congress party losing elections after elections and Sinha himself not seen in any significant role in the grand old party, his comment on Modi is being viewed in political circles as an effort of reaching out to his old party.

The actor-turned-politician still says that he has been baptised in politics in the BJP and has many "good friends" in the saffron party. "I had left the BJP disagreeing with the leadership on certain issues like demonetisation and rollout of complicated GST and still stand by it,"he said.

About the future of the Congress party, he said "we should not write off the grand old party on the basis of having lesser numbers of MPs in the last two Parliamentary elections...Congress can bounce back to power...one should not forget that BJP was also a party of two MPs at one time."