Report card: Sunny Deol, Bollywood star who won election in just 20 days but couldn’t win hearts
Gurdaspur was among the few seats in Punjab where the Narendra Modi effect was visible in 2014 and 2019.
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Deol has not visited Gurdaspur since September 2020. Here, Sunny Deol and others can be seen during an election roadshow in favor of then BJP candidate from Amritsar Hardeep Singh Puri ahead of the final phase of Lok Sabha polls in 2019. (File/ Express Photo By Rana Simranjit Singh) It took Bollywood star Sunny Deol just 20 days after entering politics to defeat sitting MP and seasoned politician Sunil Jakhar, now the BJP’s Punjab president, in the Gurdaspur constituency in 2019.
Deol, however, has remained a low-profile MP. When he wrote in February 2021 to a Mahindra dealership asking for the urgent delivery of a Thar for a woman from Pathankot, it made headlines because it was among the few such letters, written in his capacity as the MP, that had landed in the public domain.
During his term, Deol has spent in his constituency less time than he spent during the election campaign five years ago.
In the first couple of years, Deol made some representations to Union ministers regarding people’s demands from Gurdaspur. He, however, could not bring any big project for the constituency.
He did not return even when his voters were reeling under a flood in August 2023.
Attendance in the House
Sunny Deol’s attendance in parliament remained only 17 per cent. He did not attend six Parliament seasons, including the last three in a row, during his term.
Number of questions asked
Sunny Deol did not move any private member’s Bill. He asked four questions and only one of them was specific to Gurdaspur. He asked the Union environment minister a question related to the illegal sand mining in his constituency. He did not participate in any debate.
MP fund utilisation
He could utilise only Rs 7 crore from his MP local area development fund in five years when he was entitled to Rs 5 crore annually. He did not make any request for any funds in the last two years of his term and spent no money in his constituency from available funds.
Accessibility
Sunny Deol, who defeated Sunil Jakhar, then with the Congress, in the 2019 general elections, has never given a reason for staying away from Gurdaspur.
Deol was conspicuous by his absence in the 2022 Assembly poll campaign as he was among the BJP’s 40 star campaigners. The BJP performed poorly in the elections, with one of its two seats being Pathankot (state BJP president Ashwani Sharma won), which comes under the Gurdaspur constituency.
At the time, the party had claimed that restrictions imposed by the Election Commission because of the Covid third wave were why the MP was absent from the campaign trail. Though the BJP claimed that Deol would turn up for the last leg of the campaign, he did not. He also gave Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rally in Pathankot a miss.
In the meantime, Deol came to promote his movie in Amritsar, which is adjacent to his constituency. But he did not visit Gurdaspur.
“Sat shri akal Amritsar! Looking forward to meet you all today. #gadar2 in cinemas 11 August 2023 #Gadar2,” he tweeted just before the Amritsar visit to promote the movie, a sequel of his most successful work.
While Deol was busy promoting Gadar-2 all over India, his voters accomplished a heroic task by coming together to construct a Dhussi Bundh of over 250 ft in length in just three days, working in coordination with the administration to fill the breach in the river in the village of Jagatpur Tanda near Gurdaspur district during the floods in August last year. But he remained absent.
Deol has not visited Gurdaspur since September 2020.
Constituency profile
Bollywood star Vinod Khanna was the first to win the border seat touching Pakistan for the BJP, in 1998. As Vinod Khanna passed away in 2017, the party gave the ticket to Sawarn Singh Salaria, an industrialist-turned-politician, in the bypoll necessitated by the actor’s death. But he was defeated. Sunny Deol won it back for the party in 2019 using his celebrity power.
Gurdaspur was among the few seats in Punjab where the Modi effect was visible in 2014 and 2019.
For the June 1 election, the BJP has replaced Deol with Dinesh Singh Babbu, a former three-time MLA for Sujanpur in Pathankot district, which is part of the Gurdaspur parliamentary constituency.
A Rajput, Babbu hails from Manwal village in Pathankot. The district has a sizeable number of Rajput voters.
There is also a Gujjar vote bank, composed mostly of Muslims, over whom the Congress has a edge—a fact that allows the BJP to play the hard Hindutva card.
Constituency demographic
Total voters: 1,591,923
Male: 842,773
Female: 749,113
Transgender: 37
2019 voting percentage: 69.27
Last 5 MPs
2019: Gurjeet Singh Aujla (Congress)
2017 bypoll: Gurjeet Singh Aujla (Congress)
2014: Captain Amarinder Singh (Congress)
2009: Navjot Sidhu (BJP)
2007 bypoll: Navjot Singh Sidhu (BJP)
2004: Navjot Singh Sidhu (BJP)
1999: R L Bhatia (Congress)
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