On September 10, the opposition parties have come out in protests of the rise in petrol prices and have called for a Bharat Bandh today. People have been asking the BJP-led government to offer an explanation for the same, while calling them out for their silence. Many on social media have pointed out that the same people who have raised their voices and made jokes on petrol prices a few years back when the UPA government was in power are silent today. Like Akshay Kumar, for example.
In 2012, Akshay Kumar has tweeted a funny comment on the petrol hike then, and told his fans that it is time to clean up the bicycles. However, the change in governments has not made any positivity in the issue, with the prices only increasing for petrol, diesel and even LPG. The only change is Akshay has quietly deleted his six-year-old tweet (however, he forgot to delete it from his Facebook), as reported by fact-checker website Alt News. They have retrieved the tweet from the archive, the screenshot of which we have pasted below -
The website also pointed out that Akshay had failed to delete an older tweet that again pokes fun at the petrol prices.
Couldn't even get to my house at nite for all of Mumbai was queuing up for #petrol before the prices rocketed again.
— Akshay Kumar (@akshaykumar) May 16, 2011
So when the old tweet went viral, some of the Twitter users wasted no time in trolling the National Award-winning actor for his double-faced attitude.
Finally Non-Resident Nationalist Akshay Kumar Ji came against Pradhansewak government's petrol and diesel price hike.
Respect !!! #BharathBandh pic.twitter.com/ljkAxDgtDU
— Priyanka Gandhi (@WithPGV) September 9, 2018
Nobody should expect consistency or intellectual honesty from some random actor. But the fact that Kumar feels the need to delete old tweets attacking petrol pricing tells you something about the public hypocrisy of India today
— Mihir Sharma (@mihirssharma) September 10, 2018
Akshay Kumar deleted his old tweet about petrol price hike, once again he proved he is a true devotee of modiji
— Das Capital (@niravuparambil) September 10, 2018
social media never forgets. We can delete all the tweets we like but in some corner of the internet universe evidence will remain to haunt us. Delete & scoot doesn’t work unfortunately. https://t.co/BE1CBsyjQC
— Omar Abdullah (@OmarAbdullah) September 10, 2018
Akshay is not the only Bollywood celeb who made fun of the petrol prices then but is silent now. The others are Amitabh Bachchan, Anupam Kher and director Ashok Pandit. We wonder whether they are now happily riding the cycle.
Akshay is known for his affiliation with the BJP government, with many leaders in the party known to be on friendly terms with the actor. Some of Akshay Kumar's recent films like Toilet - Ek Prem Katha and Pad Man have the backing of the government.
(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Sep 10, 2018 04:03 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).