Having been at the receiving end of the Shiv Sena, its late chief Bal Thackeray and the Shiv Sena-led Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) for years on end, Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan has come in for wholesome praise from the BMC for his generous gesture of offering his four-storey personal office space for quarantining Covid-19 patients in Mumbai.
Amid massive work undertaken by it in various parts of Mumbai to combat Coronavirus, the BMC put out a tweet on its handle @mybmc: “StrongerTogether We thank @iamsrk & @gaurikhan for offering their 4-storey personal office space to help expand our Quarantine capacity equipped with essentials for quarantined children, women & elderly. Indeed a thoughtful & timely gesture!”.
A pleased SRK responded: “When we say ‘mybmc’ then it’s with a sense of ownership and pride in all the efforts your teams are putting up to fight covid 19. We both are thankful that we could be a part of your attempts to help and care for Mumbaikars. ???? Mumbai ???? BMC”
In response to support extended by the actor for combating Covid-19, Shiv Sena leader Aditya Thackeray had tweeted earlier: “Thank you so much @iamsrk ji for your support” . Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray's office also tweeted: “Thank you @iamsrk ji @gaurikhan ji”.
In response, SRK tweeted: “We don’t ever have to thank each other during times like these. We r a family. Grateful you are working so hard for Maharashtra and whenever you get alone time...do write a poem or two. Love to you”.
In another tweet put out a half Marathi-half English tweet, SRK said that “all of us are together ... with bits and bits of effort can result in an ocean of assistance. Thank you for guidance. We are all a family sir....and we need to be together to keep each other healthy. Thank you”.
The latest developments, which have seen SRK come back into the good books of Thackerays and Shiv Sena, should be seen in the context that several run-ins he had with the Sena and late Thackeray over the past decade and a half.
It may be recalled that In February 2010, Thackerays had come down heavily on SRK during the IPL-3 auctions which coincided with the release of “My Name is Khan”.
Shahrukh had come in the line of fire from late Sena chief for his remarks in favour of the inclusion of Pakistani players in IPL-3. Sr Thackeray, later, in an editorial, also said that he should now make a film – 'My Name is Kasab'.
On November 26, 2010, the Shiv Sena had hit out at Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan for his reported move to attend a celebrity dinner to be hosted by Prime TV, a Pakistani channel, in London on Sunday to “commemorate” the second anniversary of 26/11 attack on Mumbai.
Though the actor himself was not available for comment at that time, his office in Mumbai had denied reports that he would attend the celebrity dinner hosted by Prime TV and said that Shah Rukh was currently away in Berlin shooting for Don 2.
Earlier in September 2007, Shahrukh had found himself in a fresh spot of bother on Thursday, as the Bombay High Court asked him to explain the alleged violation of development control rules in the construction of a multi-storey building adjacent to his bungalow "Mannat" at Bandra in north-west Mumbai.
Hearing a PIL, the high court had directed the actor and BMC to reply to the objections raised by the BNS within two weeks.
Acting on a complaint by BJP MP Poonam Mahajan, the BMC issued a notice to actor Shah Rukh Khan in February 2015 asking him to remove the concrete ramp built on the road adjacent to his bungalow.
The actor had been given seven days to demolish the ramp which is built on the northern end of his bungalow Mannat. In case Shahrukh failed to do so, the government agency would do it on their own. The ramp was built in 2007 by Shah Rukh to park his vanity van.
Poonam Mahajan had taken up the matter with the BMC, after receiving complaints from the local residents about the chaos and traffic caused by the ramp illegally constructed by the actor.
However, on one occasion, the BMC stood by Shah Rukh in connection with a complaint made by social activist Varsha Deshpande before a magistrate court seeking action against SRK, his Gauri and five others under the Pre-conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) (PCPNDT) Act.
At a hearing before the Bombay High Court held on September 12, 2013, the BMC gave a clean chit to Shah Rukh and his wife Gauri, deposing that there was no substance in the allegation made against the celebrity couple that they had conducted pre-birth sex determination tests of their surrogate son AbRam.
In an oral submission made before Justice Sadhana Jadhav of the high court, BMC’s senior counsel M P S Rao told the high court that the civic body had conducted an inquiry into the allegations made by activist-lawyer Varsha Deshpande in her complaint against the actor and his wife), and found that there was nothing incriminating on record against the couple.
