West Bengal Panchayat Minister and senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Dilip Ghosh who is known to grab headlines for his controversial statements, has now landed at the recording studios to try his luck in singing.
The former state BJP president is heard singing a song centered around ‘jhalmuri’, a common Bengali snack which got exceptional political quotient in the recently held assembly elections.
On Monday morning, after his ritual morning walk at Eco Park at the northern fringes of Kolkata, Ghosh walked into a recording studio near Chinar Park, and recorded a song along with vocal artists Lokesh Giri and his wife Remashri.
The couple has composed the lyrics of the light-hearted ‘jhalmuri’ song, which has already captivated the audience, especially the BJP supporters, for its political messaging.
The humble Bengali evening snack has come into limelight after Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a brief stopover at a roadside jhalmuri stall in Bengal’s Jharghram district during the assembly elections.
While Modi’s photos, savouring the colourful Bengali snack went viral, the Trinamool Congress, which was then in power in West Bengal, criticised the move as a photo opportunity.
Modi however shot back at this critics saying, “I had jhalmuri but Trinamool felt the ‘jhal’ (spice)”.
The BJP which was trying its best to rub off its ‘outsider’ label, earlier used by the Trinamool, has swept the Bengal assembly polls. Meanwhile ‘jhalmuri’ which had existed as a simple Bengali evening snack has got a fresh political colour, with party leaders using its reference on and off, to target the TMC, now in opposition.