Actress-turned-politician and a leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party Roopa Ganguly has been nominated to the Rajya Sabha.
Ganguly is known for playing the character of Draupadi in BR Chopra's 1988 epic TV series 'Mahabharat'.
She contested in the recently concluded West Bengal assembly elections from Howrah North constituency but lost to cricketer-turned-politician Laxmi Ratan Shukla.
Ganguly heads the BJP’s women’s wing in West Bengal and was the star campaigner for the party in the assembly elections. She had joined the party in January last year.
Besides 'Mahabharat', 49-year-old actor is a well-known face on the television due to her roles in serials like 'Karam Apnaa Apnaa' and 'Agle Janam Mohe Bitiya Hi Kijo'.
She has also acted in a few Hindi and Bengali films in the 1990s and the 2000s. She has acted in films like Goutam Ghosh directed 'Padma Nadir Majhi', Aparna Sen's 'Yugant' and Rituparno Ghosh's 'Antarmahal'. She had also won the National Film Award in the best playback singer category for the Bengali film 'Abosheshey' (At the End of It All).
Ganguly was nominated by President Pranab Mukherjee to the seat vacated by cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu, who resigned recently following differences with the BJP leadership.
In April, the government had nominated Subramanian Swamy, Narendra Jadhav, Navjot Singh Sidhu, Suresh Gopi, Swapan Dasgupta and Mary Kom as the new Rajya Sabha members.
The government had also nominated Pranav Pandya, head of All World Gayatri Pariwar, as Rajya Sabha member in May but he declined it. In his place, the government then nominated Sambhaji Raje, a descendant of Shivaji, to the Rajya Sabha in June.
