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By:

Akhilesh Sinha

25 June 2025 at 8:23:54 pm

An Entitled Passport to Protest

The manicured streets of uptown Mumbai’s Bandra and Khar areas have long fostered a peculiar breed of celebrity activism that routinely mistakes the shield of an elite lineage for immunity from national law. Imran Khan, the nephew of Bollywood actor Aamir Khan, has enjoyed the multi-layered privileges of India’s entertainment aristocracy. Despite a career defined far more by inherited access than by cinematic triumph, Khan was handed high-profile launches on a silver platter. After debuting...

An Entitled Passport to Protest

The manicured streets of uptown Mumbai’s Bandra and Khar areas have long fostered a peculiar breed of celebrity activism that routinely mistakes the shield of an elite lineage for immunity from national law. Imran Khan, the nephew of Bollywood actor Aamir Khan, has enjoyed the multi-layered privileges of India’s entertainment aristocracy.
Despite a career defined far more by inherited access than by cinematic triumph, Khan was handed high-profile launches on a silver platter. After debuting in Jaane Tu... Ya Jaane Na, his subsequent screen output quickly laid bare the limits of his range. Critics and audiences alike routinely panned his one-dimensional performances in forgettable commercial misfires like Luck, Kidnap, and Katti Batti. Lacking the dramatic weight or versatility of his contemporaries, Khan eventually drifted away from acting altogether, leaving behind a filmography widely viewed as a textbook case of nepotistic mediocrity over merit. Yet, this week, Khan’s cocoon of celebrity exceptionalism (and artistic irrelevance) shattered when a Saturday afternoon street protest transformed the former actor into the ultimate poster child for elite hubris and geopolitical ignorance. The flashpoint occurred on October 10 at Mumbai’s August Kranti Maidan, where the activist group Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) had gathered to orchestrate an aggressive anti-CEC demonstration. Khan marched alongside protestors, treating a highly sensitive domestic political agitation as if it were a casual weekend networking event. When the Mumbai Police swiftly intervened to disperse the unauthorized gathering, Khan was detained. Rather than displaying an ounce of civic sobriety, the actor leaned entirely into performative defiance. From the back of the police van, he flashed a smug victory sign and uploaded a selfie to Instagram with the tone-deaf caption: “Apparently, I am going for a drive.” But the theatre soon evaporated when the state apparatus applied the actual rule of law. A formal complaint threw the spotlight onto a critical, inconvenient reality that Khan is an American citizen. Born in Madison, Wisconsin, he holds a US passport. While his family ties allowed him to secure an Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) card and build a lucrative career in the Hindi film industry, he remains, under the absolute text of the constitution, a foreign national. Acting strictly within the legal framework, the Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO) later issued a definitive “Leave India Notice” to the actor’s residence. Invoking the explicit provisions of the Immigration and Foreigners Act, the central agency called out his blatant violation of visa guidelines. The mandate was absolute: pack your bags and exit the country by October 28. Under long-standing sovereign rules, foreign nationals possess absolutely zero authority to interfere in, agitate against, or participate in the internal political machinery of the Indian Republic. The swift, stern administrative response exposed a massive fracture within the film fraternity, drawing sharp rebukes from veteran industry voices who refused to coddle the actor’s legal overreach. Speaking out on the brewing scandal, veteran actor Raza Murad delivered a scathing, grounded reality check to the star’s camp: “Whether it is Imran Khan or anyone else, no foreign national has any business interfering in the internal affairs of our country. I have only just learned that Imran Khan has become a U.S. national; he was an actor here. As a U.S. national, he has no right to participate so actively in the country’s internal affairs or its politics. The Mumbai Police are acting strictly within the legal framework.” Murad further dismantled the narrative of victimhood being spun by Khan’s defenders, pointing out the procedural fairness already extended to him. This incident has further laid bare the hollow performativism of Bollywood’s pseudo-liberal contingent, who routinely treat complex national affairs as casual backdrops for personal brand management. Insulated within luxury enclaves, figures like Khan step onto the street out of sheer entitlement, blissfully ignorant of both local civic sensitivities and basic constitutional laws. Faced with the hard ceiling of statutory law, Khan’s legal team has scrambled to file an urgent petition before the Bombay High Court. Yet, no amount of high-priced legal manoeuvring can obscure the foundational lesson of this debacle. While he was better off being away from the proverbial madding crowd, Imran Khan’s ill-advised stunt has now drawn a stark line for the global diaspora, namely that an OCI card is a privilege for cultural and economic connection, and not a license for foreign passport holders to dictate terms on Indian streets.

Clever seat selection helped BJP to secure historic win

Writer: Ruddhi Phadke
Ruddhi Phadke
Nov 29, 2024
2 min read

The party won 65 seats against Congress, 37 against NCP (SP) and 29 against Shiv Sena (UBT)

Clever seat selection

Mumbai: The BJP’s strategic seat sharing with the allies has proved beneficial for the party. An analysis of the Assembly election results show that the BJP has scored over its main rival, the Congress, in a big way because of the direct fights.


The analysis shows that BJP defeated all three constituents of the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) – Congress, Shiv Sena (UBT) and NCP (SP) – in the direct fights. This is attributed as one of the reasons for the BJP’s historic poll success.


The BJP contested 147 out of 288 seats. In 76 constituencies, it faced Congress. BJP secured victory in 65 seats and lost only 11 seats, making it a whopping 86 per cent of the total direct fights. This was followed by an even stronger performance against NCP (SP). Of the total 39 fights with Sharad Pawar’s party, BJP captured 37 seats making it 95 per cent of the total fights with NCP (SP). BJP and Shiv Sena (UBT) were head-to-head in 32 constituencies, of which BJP emerged victorious in 29 seats, making this 91 per cent of the total direct contests.


According to a BJP strategist the party had bargained hard with its allies, Shiv Sena and NCP to get the desired constituencies in the seat sharing formula. “We had studied to potential candidates of the MVA. That helped us in choosing the seats where we can register comfortable victories,” the strategist said.


BJP spokesperson Niranjan Shetty attributed the success to all the party workers who worked hard to boost development, infrastructure in the state. He gave credit to Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis for his contribution to the party’s success.


Shetty pointed out that in 2019, Uddhav Thackeray had stalled all the “novel” and “legendary” projects that Fadnavis had started when he had taken over as CM, making it very easy for the people of Maharashtra to strike a comparison between both the leaders and the potential they had for serving the people. “Devendra Fadnavis gave up his post very easily for the larger good. There are many such examples like Venkaiah Naidu who was BJP National President and later worked as the Vice President of India because that was the need of the hour. We seldom care about our posts,” Shetty told The Perfect Voice.


Congress spokesperson Atul Londhe refused to call the election results as the people’s mandate. “This is not at all a Janata mandate. Despite Maharashtra struggling with so many basic social issues, how can BJP acquire such a huge mandate is the question. If a student copies and fails with just passing marks, it can go unnoticed, but if a student copies and bags the number one position, something is fishy. Why is the BJP scared of ballot papers?” he said.

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