Onir Sen’s period war drama Operation Safed Sagar on Netflix has been getting rave reviews from across the board. Not only the primary cast — Siddharth, Jimmy Shergill, Dia Mirza, Amrita Bagchi, Abhay Verma, Mihir Ahuja, Prajaka Koli, Taaruk Raina, and Adil Hussain — but also the supporting cast is getting attention for their stellar acts in the series.
Set during the 1999 Kargil War fought between India and Pakistan, Operation Safed Sagar also features prominent historical personalities and politicians from the time, whether it’s Manu Rishi Chadha playing then-Pakistan Chief of Staff and future President Pervez Musharraf, or Vinay Pathak essaying then-Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
But even on this side of the Line of Control (LoC), there are some known faces who have rightfully grabbed eyeballs for their convincing portrayals of real-life personalities. One of them is veteran theatre, television, and film actor Aanjjan Srivastav, who’s seen as then-India Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, whose eighth death anniversary is being observed today. He died on August 16, 2018 at the age of 98.
Srivastav, best known for playing the proverbial common man Srinivas Wagle in RK Laxman’s popular late 1980s sitcom Wagle Ki Duniya, plays Vajpayee with such authenticity and aplomb that it becomes impossible to look away. Whether it’s while reciting poetry celebrating the valour of Indian soldiers on national television or expressing disapproval of Musharraf not saluting him during his historic Lahore visit, Srivastav is bang on Vajpayee in every scene he gets throughout the six-episode show.
However, Operation Safed Sagar isn’t the first time Aanjjan Srivastav has essayed Atal Bihari Vajpayee on the screen. He’s done it previously on two occasions on the big screen. The first time, though not officially confirmed, was in Rajkumar Hirani’s 2018 blockbuster Sanju. Srivastav is described by Sanjay Dutt’s voicover as a “senior politician” whom the actor (played by Ranbir Kapoor in the biopic) meets in order to seek help following his 1993 arrest in the Mumbai bomb blasts case.
Since Vajpayee was the leader of opposition then, he seems to be the “senior politician” referred to in Sanju. It makes sense that they didn’t name him, given his portrayal is rather dramatized. Srivastav, who does a fine job of imitating Vajpayee, is seen dozing off in the middle of the meeting multiple times as Ranbir’s Sanjay puts forth his request. He wakes up suddenly — only to ask the actor how his father (veteran actor and Congress leader Sunil Dutt) is doing. It’s a cameo, but a fairly memorable one, thanks to Srivastav’s histrionics.
However, that didn’t stop Aanjjan Srivastav from playing Atal Bihari Vajpayee on screen again, this time in Omung Kumar’s 2019 political drama PM Narendra Modi, the biopic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. While Vivek Oberoi essayed the titular role, Srivastav would step back into the shoes of Vajpayee, who was a senior that PM Modi looked up to in his early days of BJP and as the Gujarat chief minister in the early 2000s, when Vajpayee was the prime minister.
Besides Srivastav, only Pankaj Tripathi has notably played Vajpayee on the big screen in Ravi Jadhav’s 2024 biopic of the late legendary leader. Last year, Shreyas Talpade also essayed Vajpayee in Kangana Ranaut’s period political drama Emergency, based on then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s imposition of the 1975 emergency in India, when Vajpayee was a rising opposition leader. Ram Avatar Bharadwaj, a first-time actor, also had a striking resemblance with Vajpayee in Vijay Gutte’s The Accidental Prime Minister, a 2019 biopic of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, essayed by Anupam Kher in the film.
