New Delhi: Superstar Amitabh Bachchan, who swept to stardom with a series of his blockbusters in the 1970s, was unknown to former prime minister V P Singh until 1984, the year the actor made his Lok Sabha debut from Allahabad.
In his book Manzilon Se Zyada Safar, the former prime minister writes that Bachchan visited him first in 1984 with his face covered with a towel after the then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi decided to field the Bollywood star for the Allahabad by-election.
Singh, who was then UP Congress chief, reacted with surprise when party leader Arun Nehru informed him about Bachchan's candidacy.
"Who Amitabh?" the book quotes him as asking Arun Nehru. "I do not watch films, so I don't really know him," he said after learning that the candidate named for the by-election was India's superstar.
In the book, he also denies reports that he ordered a US-based company to investigate foreign accounts of Bachchan and his brother Ajitabh Bachchan.
He claims that Rajiv Gandhi ordered inquiry into Ajitabh Bachchan's alleged purchase of an apartment in Switzerland only because the matter had come up in the media.
"He (Rajiv Gandhi) did not want to order an inquiry (otherwise)," Singh writes.
The former prime minister also mentions that Bachchan resigned from the Lok Sabha possibly because of the controversies surrounding him at the time. "I can't say Gandhi asked him to quit as MP," he says.
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