The extent to which a film on the life and personality of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is influential is “evident from the fact that the Election Commission had to stop it from being released” during the Lok Sabha elections, Union minister Vijay Goel said at the premiere of PM Narendra Modi, the biopic on Modi, in the national capital on Monday.
The screening was organised by Gyan Foundation, a group of young professionals, mostly BJP members, at a theater in New Delhi’s Connaught Place area.
Besides Goel, among other BJP leaders in attendance were Rajya Sabha MP Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, party’s national vice-president Shyam Jaju, BJP leader Virendra Sachdeva, and Mayor North Delhi Corporation Avatar Singh.
The opening 15 minutes of the film shows Modi selling tea and listening to political conversations; he watches his mother cooking on a chullah (a reference to the Centre’s Ujjwala scheme); and soldiers going to the front (reference to Balakot airstrikes). It shows Modi saluting the national flag on several occasions.
The film also shows Modi riding a Bullet motorcycle, going to the Himalayas for enlightenment, and asking a political leader to pretend that he was dead to escape police crackdown during the Emergency.
During the interval, the BJP leaders and actor Vivek Oberoi, who plays the on-screen Modi, addressed the audience. Oberoi said, “People say I am making movie to make Modi-ji a hero. I will say he is already a hero – I am just making a film on him.”