Several Bollywood stars had met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Mumbai in December 2018 but what was strange to see was that not even a single woman from the film fraternity was a part of that meeting. The meeting was held to lower and uniform the rates of GST for the entertainment industry in India. After the first meeting, of course, there was another meeting held with PM Modi which included several women from the industry like Alia Bhatt, Ekta Kapoor, Ashwini Iyer, and Bhumi Pednekar.

[caption id="attachment_229669" align="aligncenter" width="647"] File photo of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Aamir Khan[/caption]

When asked about why no women from the fraternity were present in the first meet with Prime Minister Modi, Aamir, at an interaction on his birthday, revealed, "I was the part of the group (first delegation). It was not an official delegation to PM from Bollywood, it happened in an organic form. Me, Ritesh (Sidhwani) and other four (Bollywood folks) on different occasions thought about the issue we want to bring up with PM. It's sad and unfortunate, for example, a Zoya (Akhtar) was not a part of that discussion or meeting. This was not a thought out move to keep women out, don't read too much into what social media says."

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"It was a coincidence that no woman was present in that group, it was not planned ki nahi kisi woman ko nahi leke jayenge", he added.

[caption id="attachment_229676" align="aligncenter" width="647"] Narendra Modi with Bollywood celebrities on their second meeting[/caption]

The second meeting with PM Modi saw Alia Bhatt to Ekta Kapoor is attendance, but still filmmakers like Alankrita Srivastava and others raised their voices about the bias and the film group (delegation) even received flak on social media for the same.