Undeterred by her disastrous performance in the recent lok Sabha polls, Bollywood’s “item girl” Rakhi Sawant on Saturday sought to try her luck once again in politics, by joining the Ramadas Athavale-led Republican Party of India (RPI-A) in the run-up to the Maharashtra Assembly polls.
A week after she met Athavale and expressed her desire to enter his party and work for the issues relating to Dalit, Rakhi formally joined the RPI (A) at a function held at Bandra’s MIG Club in north-west Mumbai in the afternoon.After welcoming her into his party, RPI (A) president Athavale appointed her as the party’s national women wing chief.
Rakhi, it may be recalled, had April this year founded a political outfit, Rashtriya Aam Party and contested the lok Sabha polls from Mumbai north-west constituency against sitting Congress MP Gurudas Kamat, Shiv Sena's Gajanan Kiritikar and actor-filmmaker Mahesh Manrekar of the MNS.
Rakhi not only lost her deposit but also polled a mere 2,006 votes in the polls, in which Sena’s Kititikar trounced Kamat of the Congress by a margin of 1,83,028 votes.Prior to her setting up Rashtriya Aam Party, Rakhi had tried to join the BJP. On a time when retired Gen VK Singh joined the BJP, Sawant had made presence felt at the party headquarters in New Delhi.“I am a daughter of the BJP and it is like my home. I want people to support Modi, and I am sure he is going to be the next PM,” Rakhi had said, while talking to mediapersons in the national capital.
After she announced her decision to contest the lok Sabha polls on Rashtriya Aam Party ticket, the actress had claimed that the BJP had offered her a ticket from Sriramapur in West Bengal. “But I did not accept it as I am a Mumbaikar and can speak Marathi and Hindi. I do not know local language of that area so why should I contest from thereIJ” she had asked.
It remains to be seen if the RPI (A), which is a constituent of the BJP-led “Maha-Yuti (Opposition grand alliance), will put up Rakhi as its candidate in the forthcoming State Assembly polls.