Mumbai, (Samajweekly) The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Monday made a public appeal to cricket icon Sachin Tendulkar to “express support for the farmers of India”.
In an open letter to Tendulkar, AAP’s national executive member Preeti Sharma-Menon urged the former India cricketer to heed the request of a farmer’s son, Ranjeet Bagal, and post at least one tweet supporting the country’s peasantry.
Sporting a kurta-pyjama, Bagal, the son of a Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana activist who’s barely in his teens, travelled around 225 km from Pandharpur (Solapur) to Mumbai carrying a large poster in his hand.
The poster has a simple query: “Sachin, When will you tweet for our farmer-fathers”, grabbing attention from the passersby in Bandra with many clicking his pictures or filming videos.
The boy attempted to reach out to Tendulkar outside his Bandra home, but was shooed away with a threat of police action by some unknown persons, purportedly from the cricketer’s private security detail.
Endorsing the farm lad’s plea to Tendulkar, Sharma-Menon called upon him “to please heed his (Ranjeet Bagal’s) prayer” and just make one tweet in return for which countless Indians will again shower the cricketer with their love and blessings.
“He (Bagal) came from Pandharpur, the ‘Devnagari’ where all Maharashtrians go for pilgrimage, on a pilgrimage to Mumbai where his God, Sachin Tendulkar, lives,” said Sharma-Menon in her fervent request seeking a tweet from the cricket legend.
It may be recalled that on February 3, Tendulkar had tweeted what is termed as the government viewpoint: “External forces can be spectators but not participants. Indians know India and should decide for India. Let’s remain united as a nation.”
The Maharashtra Congress on Monday complained to state Home Minister Anil Deshmukh on a series of similarly-worded tweets by several celebs and sought a probe into whether the BJP was “pressurising” them to make such posts.
Deshmukh has directed the state intelligence department to investigate the matter even as the BJP Leader of Opposition cried foul, saying the government is targeting revered icons like Tendulkar and Lata Mangeshkar.
