On Wednesday, Akshay Kumar unveiled the motion poster of his upcoming film Mission Raniganj. The rescue drama is based on the heroic exploits of Jaswant Singh Gill, who played a key role in the rescue of trapped miners inside a coal mine in 1989. Many noticed that the film’s tagline reads Great Bharat Rescue. This is contrary to earlier reports where the film had been promoted and talked about as The Great Indian Rescue. Fans wondered if the ‘name change’ had any link to the ongoing India name change row.

Last week, a viral dinner invitation from the President during the G20 Summitt had the words ‘president of Bharat’ instead of ‘President of India’. This snowballed into a political controversy about if the administration is planning to rename India to Bharat.

In the background of this, the change in the tag line of Mission Raniganj has made fans curious. The actor also shared the motion poster on social media on Wednesday with an emphasis on the protagonist being ‘Bharat’s true hero’, a phrasing that was not missed by many. In fact, th actor first posted a tweet calling him India’s true hero before deleting it and posting another with the word Bharat. On Reddit, as fans shared the motion poster, one commented, “They took this as an opportunity for promotion lol. They renamed a whole movie.” Another comment read, “The great ‘Bharat’ rescue…poster designer has definitely been overworked in the last couple of days.”
Mission Raniganj is inspired by a real life incident at Raniganj Coalfield in November 1989 where Jaswant Singh Gill led a rescue mission to save trapped miners. Starring Akshay Kumar, Parineeti Chopra, Kumud Mishra, Pavan Malhotra, Ravi Kishan, Varun Badola, Dibyendu Bhattacharya, Rajesh Sharma, Virendra Saxena, Shishir Sharma, Ananth Mahadevan, Jameel Khan, Sudhir Pandey, Bachan Pachera, Mukesh Bhatt, Omkar Das Manikpuri, the film is directed by Tinu Suresh Desai and produced by Vashu Bhagnani, Jackky Bhagnani, Deepshikha Deshmukh and Ajay Kapoor. Mission Raniganj releases in theatres on October 6.