The Samajwadi Party, which previously used Amitabh as its brand ambassador is looking towards Sanjay Dutt or possibly Shabana Azmi to contest Lucknow for the Uttar Pradesh Lok Sabha elections next year. Sanjay is the son of Congress Party leader Sunil Dutt and the brother of sitting Congress MP Priya Dutt. Samajwadi and Congress have close links. However, Sanjay was recently quoted as saying, “No politics for me till the next 10 years. I think I have another 10 years to go in acting and I have to pursue that. Maybe later, I will take on politics.”
Sanjay has a couple of key films pencilled in for early next year, including the latest in the Munna Bhai series, Munna Bhai Chale Amerika. He is also in Koochie Koochie Hota Hain. Sanjay has recently decided to lower his price to 15 crores in response to the economic recession. “Recession has hit everyone big time,” he explains, “We all need to understand the seriousness of the situation and co-operate. We simply have to lower our prices. We in the film industry are part of one big family and we’ve to make our family survive this worst-ever crisis.”
Meanwhile, Sanjay is looking forward to the release of Blue, which also stars Akshay Kumar, Lara Dutta and Katrina Kaif. It also has an item number from Kylie Minogue, perhaps starting a whole new trend of top western stars being sucked up for item numbers (Rihanna anyone?) and is likely to be the most expensive Bollywood movie ever made. If that’s not enough for Sanju fans, they can also look forward to the troubled but increasingly relevant production of Lamha, which also stars Bipasha Basu.
