Director Mahesh Bhatt’s wife and actor Alia Bhatt’s mother Soni Razdan today stirred a hornet’s nest when she uploaded a misleading picture on Twitter imploring Indian votaries to remember Junaid Khan before they cast their vote. Soni asserted that Junaid was killed for being a Muslim. This is, however, untrue, as the courts have already said that the cause of his murder was the spat over the seat-sharing in a train compartment.
— Soni Razdan (@Soni_Razdan) April 12, 2019
In light of the incident, it is germane to bring one’s attention to Soni Razdan’s origins. Soni Razdan, while feigning to create awareness among Indian voters, is herself not eligible to cast her vote in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections.
In fact, she and her daughter Alia Bhatt both hold British passports. Soni Razdan was born in Birmingham, UK to a German mother and a Kashmiri Pandit father and she is a British citizen. The Indian Constitution doesn’t permit dual citizenship and only those who are legally Indian citizens can exercise their right to vote.
Thus, it is a bit rich coming from Soni Razdan when she moralises the Indian voters on how they should vote while herself being ineligible to vote. It is profoundly paradoxical that a British citizen is harbouring such deep concern for the choices made by Indians and advising Indians about how to vote.
If Soni Razdan is really worried about how Indian citizens votes in the ongoing elections, she should have surrendered her British Nationality, applied for the Indian citizenship and actively volunteered to create awareness among voters about the value of their votes and the choice of their candidates. Until then, her concern will only appear as hypocrisy.
Perhaps, with Indian citizenship, she would also acquaint herself with the true facts of the incidents before using propagandist versions to sermonise people on their choices.
