Senior Congress leader and Rajya Sabha MP Digvijaya Singh on Monday, December 13, invited stand-up comedians Kunal Kamra and Munawar Faruqui to hold a programme at Bhopal in the BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh after they were recently denied permission for their shows in Bengaluru.
On Monday, Digvijaya Singh in a Twitter post said, "I will organise a show for you Kunal and Munawar in Bhopal. All responsibility will be mine. Only condition is that the subject of comedy will be Digvijaya Singh. Sanghis (RSS cadre) should not object to this!! Don't be afraid!! Give the date and time as per your convenience. All your conditions are accepted."
Kunal Kamra replied to Singh’s tweet, saying, “Sir thank you for the kind invitation. Checking if we have life insurance and getting back to you ASAP (sic).” In his post, the Rajya Sabha member also tagged a news article related to Kamra.
Last month, Munawar Faruqui’s show ‘From Dongri to Nowhere’ was cancelled in Bengaluru, after the organisers were told by police to do the same in light of threats from Hindu vigilante groups. Over 700 tickets for the show had already been sold, which was scheduled to be held on November 28. Faruqui, a stand-up comedian from Gujarat, was arrested in 2021 by the Indore police after a BJP MLA’s son said that the jokes that “he was going to crack” at a local show were offensive.
Sir thank you for the kind invitation. Checking if we have life insurance and getting back to you ASAP https://t.co/2Ka0USmzpj
— Kunal Kamra (@kunalkamra88) December 13, 2021
Days later, a series of Kunal Kamra’s shows, over 20 days, in Bengaluru were announced to be cancelled as well. They were cancelled due to threats to shut down the venue, as well as over denial of special seating permissions. Sources close to the comedian had told TNM that while his shows had been cancelled for similar reasons in other states, this was the first time that a show was cancelled in Bengaluru.