Is Madame Chief Minister based on Mayawati?

A Dalit politician, taken under the wing of a powerful entity, rises to the ranks of the chief minister. Sounds familiar? Subhash Kapoor’s Madam Chief Minister seems to have borrowed generously from Madame Mayawati’s life, including that boyish haircut.

Richa Chadha plays the Chief Minister. Aside from the haircut, she looks like nothing like Mayawati. But that’s no reason to believe we are barking up the wrong tree. When did Vidya Balan look like Shakuntala Devi and does Kangana Ranaut look anything like Jayalalitha?

Subhash Kapoor who has been missing from the marquee for many years is best remembered for the wonderfully ebullient comment on the legal system in Jolly LLB. In Madam Chief Minister he seems to have taken the core of Mayawati’s story and sprinkled it lavishly with fiction. Hence Ms Chief Minister has a husband (Manav Kaul) who is conveniently bumped off to trigger off a routine revenge face-off with the lady CM’s arch-enemy played by Akshay Oberoi.

Why Akshay Oberoi, for crying out loud? With his innocent looks, he looks like anything but a trigger-happy politician. Maybe the whole idea of looks being deceptive works to the film’s advantage. The trailer of Madam Chief Minister has enough clues for us to believe that this is a powerful political parable about an ‘untouchable’ woman who secures the State’s highest seat. As she goes from the groom(Kaul) to broom (see Ms Chadha on the poster) to boom(there is a virtual bloodbath towards the end) we know one thing for sure. This CM isn’t a walkover.