Chirag Paswan, who was recently sworn in as Minister of Food Processing Industries, has been in the limelight ever since. A former actor, he starred with actor-politician Kangana Ranaut in the film Miley Naa Miley Hum (2011). Calling his acting stint a “disaster”, Paswan accepts that he was never cut out for Bollywood. “It was a different time. I can’t say if it was difficult or easy. No one from my family has ever been a part of Bollywood. In a filmi way I can say, ‘Meri saat pushto ka film se koi naata nahin raha’. I was the first who tried to venture into it,” he told journalist Smita Prakash in her ANI podcast.

Paswan added, “Very soon, I realized that it (venturing into acting) was a disaster. I realized I was a disaster even before [everyone else in] the country [felt that]. I wasn’t made for this (acting).”

The 41-year-old added that friendship with actor and now fellow-MP Kangana Ranaut was the “only good thing” about his Bollywood stint: “We became really good friends. So, I was really looking forward to meeting Kangana in the Parliament, because for the last three years, I was so busy that I had lost connect with her.”

Paswan and Ranaut made headlines recently when a photo of them went viral. The two were captured greeting each other warmly with a low five outside the Parliament recently. When asked if he thinks Ranaut, 38, can make a difference as an MP, Paswan said, “One thing I know for sure is that most of the times, Kangana isn’t politically correct. But that’s her USP. She talks her [mind]… She knows kya bolna hai, kab bolna hai. Ab woh politically correct ho, nahin ho, woh debatable ho sakta hai.”