The BJP government at the center hosted a meeting with Bollywood celebrities regarding the ongoing protests for the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in various parts of India. Several names such as Karan Johar, Farhan Akhtar, Kabir Khan, Siddharth Roy Kapur, Ritesh Sidhwani and others were in the guestlist for the meeting. However, most of them, including KJo, gave it a miss.
Farhan Akhtarstated he is out of the country and thus will not be able to attend the meetinghosted by the Centre following with dinner. His business partner RiteshSidhwani, however, was seen at the meeting, which was held in Mumbai's GrandHyatt hotel.
Othercelebrities to attend the meeting, held by Railways Minister Piyush Goyal,were Kunal Kohli, Prasoon Joshi, Anu Malik, Vipul Shah, Bhushan Kumar,Kailash Kher, Anil Sharma, Shailesh Lodha, Shashi Ranjan, Ritesh Sidhwani,Abhishek Kapoor, Suresh Wadhkar, Rahul Rawal, Ranvir Shorey, and Shaan.
Interestingly, names like Swara Bhasker, Varun Grover,Vikramaditya Motwane, Anubhav Sinha, Neeraj Ghaywan and Anurag Kashyap, who havebeen openly talking about CAA protests on the internet, were not invited forthe conference.
Soon afterreports of the meeting made rounds of the internet, Twitter went on a protestagainst Bollywood and asked the Bollywood biggies to not be part of the CAAmeeting. #BollywoodWakeUp started trending on Twitter for a long time.
The invite reportedlycame from film producer Mahavir Jain. He has also been linked as PM Modi's manand the name behind the popular Bollywood selfie with Modi.
