KOLKATA: A Bengali television and OTT actor has suddenly found herself featured across banners, hoardings and kiosks at several public places in Kolkata as part of a central government’s free vaccination campaign alongside PM Narendra Modi. But she claimed that she had never been a part of it.
Dipanwita Nath, a popular face in Bengali TV serials, advertisements and a couple of web series, said some of her friends started sending her photographs of some banners where she was found wearing a white salwar-kameez and spectacles smiling along with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and three others. The advertisement read: “Thank you PM Modi!” and “World’s largest free vaccination campaign”.
“I had never participated in the campaign and no one even sought permission from me to use the image for the campaign. It’s an old photo and I don’t even know from where they picked it. Free vaccination for everyone is indeed a great step amid the Covid pandemic but while publicising it, necessary permission should also be taken before using someone’s photograph in an advertisement,” said Nath, who took it on social media on Wednesday to express her anguish.
Known for her acting in popular Bengali serial ‘Joy Baba Lokenath’, films like ‘Jadu Kadai’ and ‘Adda’ and web series like ‘Khyapa’, ‘Biye Scenes’ and ‘Bouma Detective’, Nath said: “Seeing my photograph in such a statewide campaign is disturbing. Firstly, I am an actor whose one source of earning is from photoshoots and I wasn’t paid for this one and secondly, many people have started questioning me on my political stand after I was featured in the campaign. I am an apolitical person.”
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