'Rajneeti' characters inspired by Mahabharata: Prakash Jha

With Katrina Kaif's character in the film Rajneeti seen by many to be loosely based on Sonia Gandhi's life, director Prakash Jha today said it does not portray the life of the Congress president and all roles are inspired by epic Mahabharata.

"There is so much hullabaloo about the character being played by Katrina (Kaif) but I want say here that her role has no connection with Sonia Gandhi...because the character Katrina represents is one of the characters of Mahabharata," Jha told reporters.

He asserted that the story did not have link with politics and he did not advocate any political ideology.

"Politics, to me, is development...being able to do good for the people and their uplift and development.

"I worked in my area to bring prosperity in lives of people there and my whole idea to contest elections was to have access to the resources spend in my area," said the 58-year-old director who unsuccessfully contested the last general election on a Lok Janshakti Party ticket.

On young politicians in Parliament, he said "I think young people are more and more getting engaged with politics...look at the last (Lok Sabha) elections and the number of young people elected which is important."

Actor Manoj Bajpayee, who was also accompanying Jha, said politics is something which one cannot ignore nowadays.

"You get to see so many newspapers, channels and (then) you cannot ignore politics...it is an essential thing now," said Bajpai.