Richa Chadha to play lead in Subhash Kapoor's political drama, Madam Chief Minister

Richa Chadha has signed on to play the lead in director Subhash Kapoor's upcoming political drama, Madam Chief Minister. The actress will join Manav Kaul and Saurabh Shukla in the cast. The film will be shot in a straight 40-day schedule in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, in December. 

Kapoor was earlier working on the biopic of T-Series founder, the late Gulshan Kumar, with Akshay Kumar playing the title role. However, Kumar dropped out of the project, leading to Aamir Khan stepping in. 

But the project did not progress any further as the spate of allegations of sexual harassment against Kapoor led to him being dropped from it. Khan also shifted his focus to shooting for the Forrest Gump (1994) remake Laal Singh Chaddha (2020).  

In a quote to the daily Mumbai Mirror, Kapoor said, "During one of the discussions on Gulshan ji's biopic, I brought up this subject with Bhushan ji who agreed to support the film." 

T-Series head, Bhushan Kumar added, "Subhash has incorporated many incidents and anecdotes he had seen and experienced as a political journalist into the narrative." 

Chadha confirmed her joy at the announcement of the project and said, "My toughest part yet, I am grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with particularly witty Subhash Sir and with the splendid cast of Manav, Akshay Oberoi, and Saurabh Shukla." 

The film is backed by T-Series, and has been scheduled for a release on 17 July.