Gorakhpur: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Tuesday said those who have threatened Padmavati director Sanjay Leela Bhansali and actress Deepika Padukone are wrong.
Adityanath said the Uttar Pradesh government had already presented its views to the censor board and central government.
“Those who have threatened to behead Deepika Padukone and Sanjay Leela Bhansali are wrong,” Adityanath said here.
A BJP leader had announced a reward of Rs 10 crore for anyone who beheads Bhansali and Padukone. He was booked on Tuesday.
Adityanath also said that Bhansali should respect the sentiments of people protesting against the film.
“Bhansali has no right to play with the emotions of people. If people are protesting, he should respect their sentiments,” he said.
Padmavati was scheduled to hit the theatres on December 1 but it has been mired in controversy over conjectures that it distorts history about Rajput queen Padmavati.
Its release has been deferred and a new date is to yet to be announced.
Meanwhile, award winning poet and author of the verse anthology Do Panktiyon Ke Beech (Between Two Lines) Rajesh Joshi has questioned the Madhya Pradesh government’s decision to ban the movie Padmavati and has demanded an apology from the Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan for his attack on the freedom of expression.
In an interview, the poet said the contested figure of Padmavati in the movie was not a figure in history but character of fiction produced by the sufi poet Malik Muhammad Jayasi (1492-1542) in his epic poem Padmavat. “Padmavati is not a historical, but a fictional character written by Malik Muhammad Jayasi. Often myths take the proportions of reality. The same is happening in this case,” he said. — IANS
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