Now, Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) is using an old video of Smriti Irani to slam the involvement of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the Deepika Padukone's saffron bikini controversy. Riju Dutta, the national spokesperson for TMC, shared a video of Irani competing in the Miss India 1998 swimsuit round. In the video, she is seen wearing a saffron bikini. Dutta wrote “Rang de tu mohe gerua (Colour me saffron), using the line from a popular Arijit Singh song from SRK-starrer Dilwale, while sharing the video.
BJP MP Locket Chatterjee was quick to slam the video. “Shame on Mamata Banerjee for appointing such misogynist men as TMC’s national spokesperson. He has no respect for women and the choices they make in life. They resent successful women and their rise. Men like him are responsible for rising crime against women," Chatterjee tweeted.
Dutta replied, “Stop acting like Saffron is your Party’s Paternal Property. Second, when other women like Deepika Padukone wears saffron the u lot have tremors but when Smriti Irani does, u lot have partial blindness (sic)."
According to Dutta, TMC has no issue with Smriti Irani's choice of clothing because it is her prerogative to do so. “But we oppose BJP's moral policing and selective outrage against certain people. I have just shown the mirror to them," Dutta told ANI.
“Is saffron colour BJP's private property? Who gives them authority over it? If they're abusing women like Deepika Padukone for wearing clothes of her choice in saffron colour, then they should also see that their union minister wore a saffron-coloured bikini in 1998," he added.
The saffron controversy involving the Pathaan song does not end there. BJP's Amit Malviya shared a video of Arijit Singh singing the Gerua song at the Kolkata International Film Festival (KIFF) opening ceremony. Singh sang the song after Banerjee, the chief minister of West Bengal, had requested him to sing one song. Malviya wrote that, in her own backyard, the West Bengal CM was reminded by Singh that “the future of Bengal is saffron".
What Malviya shared was, however, an edited version of the original clip that shows Arijit singing a Bengali song first. Then, he chose to sing the Gerua song as Shah Rukh Khan was present. “SRK is in front of me. How can I sing something else?" Singh said before singing the song.
