NEW DELHI: Describing the recent Award Wapsi phenomenon as an attempt to tarnish India’s image by a section of filmmakers and actors, actor Anupam Kher has decided to organise a protest march to Rashtrapati Bhavan on Saturday.

Kher’s wife Kiron, talking to India Today on the phone from Chandigarh on Wednesday, said: "There is no threat to democracy. Vested interests intolerant to the Narendra Modi government are behind this campaign.”

The protest march is slated for the weekend, when Kher will meet President Pranab Mukherjee with a group of top Bollywood actors and common people. Kher added that it would be a “campaign for truth”.

Last week, Anupam Kher was booed by audience as a debate at a literary festival in Mumbai on freedom of speech heated up, with the actor wondering aloud if it was a paid audience.

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Kher was among the panel of speakers at the debate on 'Freedom of expression is in imminent danger' organised as part of the Tata Literature Live Festival last week.

Kher along with BJP spokesperson Nalin Kohli, spoke for the motion whereas former BJP ideologue Sudheendra Kulkarni and noted writer Shobha De spoke against the motion.

Soon after Kher rose to speak, he was booed after he recalled Shobha De's past as an editor of a film magazine "which printed gossip about which film star slept with whom."

Undeterred, Kher went on saying "people have an agenda and cannot handle a chaiwala becoming a PM."

As the booing continued, Kher said he had spoken to the festival organiser Anil Dharker in the morning and expressed his apprehensions of a paid audience at the debate.

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This infuriated several members of the audience who kept on booing the actor.

His wife Kirron Kher, a BJP MP, who was in the audience rose to his defence but the audience did not stop booing Kher who said being a theatre artist he was used to such booing.

