Jaya Prada View Biography 245 Views

The film industry has a deep connection with Indian politics for decades. Many film stars were roped in by various political parties to win elections, many dabbled in politics as a second career once their film days were over. Some, like Amitabh Bachchan, quit politics mid way. Many, like Shatrughan Sinha, went on to become ministers at the national level.

Jaya Prada’s case is unique. She not only ran a full cycle as a star during her film days, but like regulation greedy politicians, she also ran a full cycle in politics.

On one hand, she dominated the Telugu and Hindi films during the 70s and 80s, and acted in many Telugu, Tamil, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali and Marathi films. On the other, she has changed political allegiance five times between 1994 and 2019!

Born on April 3, 1962, Jayaprada was spotted dancing at a school function and offered a 3 minute dancing role in a Telugu film for which she was paid ₹ 10/. However, the attractive looks and skills got her film roles and almost overnight, she became a huge star and dominated the South Indian and Hindi film industry right through the 80s.

In 1994, she was invited to join Telegu Desam by NTR and actively campaigned for TDP candidates.After his death, she continued to be in the party which had N Chandra Babu Naidu as the leader. She was nominated to Rajya Sabha in 1996. Post TDP she joined the Samajwadi Party, won elections to Lok Sabha in 2004 and 2009 from Rampur. She contested the Bijnor seat on a RLD ticket but lost and in 2019 she joined BJP.

She was supposed to have a delightful rivalry with Sridevi and perhaps the only time they acted together was in Vijay Sadanah’s Aulad!

Whichever way you look at Jaya Prada, she will continue to dominate national space.