Akshay Kumar, Sachin Tendulkar, Lata Mangeshkar and Saina Nehwal were among the celebrities who had tweeted in support of the government.
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Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh has said that the state government will probe whether celebrities were ‘pressurised’ to tweet in favour of the Indian government following international pop sensation Rihanna’s tweet drawing attention to the farmer protests. Anil Deshmukh was responding to a question by Congress’s Sachin Sawant, who asked whether the government will probe the tweets. Several Bollywood celebrities had taken to Twitter shortly after the Ministry of External Affairs reacted to Rihanna’s tweets, defending the farm laws and alleging that some "vested interest groups" were trying to enforce their agenda on the protests. The MEA’s statement had two hashtags, #IndiaAgainstPropaganda and #IndiaTogether and soon, several bigwigs including Akshay Kumar, Ajay Devgn, Suneil Shetty, Lata Mangeshkar, Sachin Tendulkar, Virat Kohli and joined top ministers in calling for ‘unity’ and ‘support’ to the Indian government. “After Rihanna’s tweet, many Indian celebrities like Lata Mangeshkar, Sachin Tendulkar, Akshay Kumar, Saina Nehwal and those who have brought laurels for India in their fields, tweeted in response. As you say, it should be probed about whether they tweeted of their own volition or were they pressurised to do so? Seeing the timing, and it must be seen whether they were pressurised to tweet because you say Saina Nehwal and Akshay Kumar’s tweets are very similar,” Anil Deshmukh said, during a virtual meeting with a Congress delegation. Congress’s Sachin Sawant had raised the similarity between Akshay and Saina’s tweets, asking whether the celebrities were ‘forced’ to tweet in favour of the government. “There was a series of tweets after MEA's response to Rihanna's tweet. If a person, be it a celebrity, opine on their own, it's fine but there's a scope of suspicion that BJP could be behind this. We have cited common words like 'amicable' in these tweets,” Sachin Sawant told the media on Monday. “If BJP is intimidating our national heroes, they should be provided security. I spoke to Home Minister Anil Deshmukh and he said it is a serious matter. He has given orders to the Intelligence department to probe into this,” Sawant added. Last week, Rihanna drew global attention to the farmer protests after she shared a CNN news article with her 100 million followers on Twitter, calling out the internet shutdown at the protest sites near Kaithal, Panipat, Jind, Rohtak, Charkhi Dadri, Sonipat and Jhajjar districts in Haryana. "Why aren't we talking about this? #FarmersProtest," the 32-year-old singer wrote. Also read: Greta Thunberg, Lilly Singh, Mia Khalifa: Global support for farmers' protest grows The tweets posted by many celebrities in favour of the government ranged from advising people to focus on the government's efforts to resolve the farmer crisis to sharing the MEA statement. The MEA had said that a very small section of farmers in parts of the country has reservations about the farm reforms which were passed by Parliament after full debate and discussion. It also told those questioning Indian government over the protests that “facts on the issue must be ascertained before rushing to comment on it.” However, there were celebrities like Taapsee Pannu, Abhay Deol, Farah Khan Ali and Swara Bhaskar, as well as politicians from the opposition parties, who lamented their colleagues for sharing identical tweets defending the government. Also read: Taapsee, Tharoor call out govt's 'counter' celebrity campaign to Rihanna's tweet
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