Addressing a rally in Haryana, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Tuesday, said that Chinese President Xi Jinping had told him he had watched the movie Dangal. Seeking support for Babita Phogat, the BJP candidate from Dadri assembly seat, Modi said he was proud that daughters of Haryana had proved their mettle.
He said that the subject came up during the recently concluded informal summit with Xi at Mamallapuram. “This made me very proud of Haryana,” he added.
Wrestler Babita Phogat became a household name after Dangal, the Bollywood film about the struggle of her father and noted wrestling coach Mahavir Singh Phogat to train her and her sister Geeta, became a runaway hit. After its release in China in 2018, Aamir Khan’s Dangal was the most popular Hindi movie of all time raking in Rs 1,300 crore which is nearly half of the total collections of the eight Indian films released in the last three years
Babita's entry into the political 'dangal' has spiced up the contest for the Dadri assembly seat, where no party has won consecutive terms in the past four elections.
The 29-year-old BJP candidate is pitted against seasoned politicians like Satpal Sangwan of the Jannayak Janta Party (JJP) and Nirpender Singh Sangwan of the Congress. Both have won this seat earlier by margins of less than 2,000 votes.
The Arjuna awardee says like in sports, she will make a mark in politics too and motivate women to take the plunge in this field. "Women, sportspersons and the youth will be my priority, and for them I will keep doing something or the other," she says.
Phogat lauded the Centre's flagship initiatives like Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, which targets women, and is a big fan of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. She said she was inspired by him to join the party. The BJP's ideology and bold decisions like scrapping Jammu and Kashmir's special status under Article 370 impressed her, she adds.
-with inputs from PTI