BJP, AAP and Bollywood: From poster wars to morphed videos heralding elections
2 min read 26 Feb 2023, 10:02 PM ISTTurf between the BJP and AAP to gain control of MCD led to the poster war between the two. However, this is not the first time political parties resorted to Bollywood movies for targeting their opponents. Know about some other such instance of political poster wars
PremiumA poster war erupted between Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) this week with each blaming the other for the ruckus during elections for the standing committee in Delhi's MCD house. BJP uploaded an edited poster of 90's movie ‘Khalnayika’ with morphed image of AAP's Atishi. In response, AAP released a poster of 1974's Chor Machaye Shor with BJP leaders' image.
However, this is not the first time, when political parties targeted opponents with the help of movie posters or cinematic clips.
Last year, when AAP's Manish Sisodia became the prime accused in an FIR registered by the CBI to probe the alleged irregularities in Delhi Excise Policy, the BJP shared Ranveer Singh's ‘Lootera’ movie poster with Manish Sisodia's morphed image. The morphed poster featured the Deputy CM atop a motorcycle and was widely shared on social media platforms. At that time, AAP had criticised BJP's way of targeting Delhi's Deputy Chief Minister.
However, the saffron party didn't settle with one poster and released another one within weeks.
This time, BJP gave a creative twist to the poster of 1974's Hindi movie, Be-Iman. The movie poster was edited with the images of Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia, and Atishi. The poster mentioned Delhi CM as the Film maker, Manish Sisodia and Satyendra Jain as Director and Assistant Film maker. In-charge of BJP's media relation in Delhi, Harish Khurana shared the edited poster on Twitter, with a caption ‘Fitrati Be-Imaan’.
In another incident of poster attacks during the same month, BJP used Kishore Kumar's 1958's movie ‘Delhi ka Thug’ poster. The party's Delhi unit tweaked the movie name to ‘Delhi ke Thugs’ and added the image of Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia, Satyendra Jain, Kailash Gehlot and other AAP leaders.
The edited poster was shared by the BJP Delhi Twitter handle with a message, “From reel life to real life….. Thanks “AAP" for reminding us !"
The poster was released after BJP's attack on AAP with its ‘Lootera’ poster.
In recent years politicians have repeatedly connected pop culture references to other ongoing issue (be it national or international) to target their opponents. In a recent incident, BJP portrayed Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia as the two spys of Raj Kapoors ‘Do Jasoos’ released in 1975. BJP's Shehzaad Poonawala shared the edited poster of the movie to target AAP.
"AAP films presents “Do Jasoos" AAP Ka Taaza Paap -FBU China had balloon 🎈 &Kejriwal used tax payer money & created “Gestapo" FBU-extra-constitutional private intel agency to do political snooping without approval. 60% of FBU reports- political," tweeted Shehzad Poonawala while sharing the poster and other news reports.
In another case, the AAP used an edited video of Akshay Kumar's ‘Hey Baby' to narrate the situation of Punjab after state assembly elections in 2022.
“Punjab's next CM is in the house!" tweeted the official handle of the party for Delhi.
Apart from AAP and BJP, several other political parties have also used edited movie posters to set their narrative or target the opponent party. Regardless of who uses it for whom, poster wars for political parties is an interesting way to give their message in the public.
