Prashant Sethi in 2013 (L) and in 2019

SURAT: Ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha election , Prashant Sethi's uncanny resemblance to Congress president Rahul Gandhi had generated a lot of excitement. As people gorged on the food at his eatery near Kapadiya Club, Sethi relished the attention in election season.

But five years on, this 30-year-old BJP sympathiser is no longer happy with the RaGa lookalike tag. So fed up was Sethi that he decided to change his look completely: he put on nearly 20kg and redid his hairstyle so that not an iota of similarity with the Congress president remained.

He also claims to have turned down the role of Rahul Gandhi in the recent big-budget Bollywood movie based on PM Narendra Modi 's life. "I don't wish to be known as a lookalike of Rahul Gandhi. Of course, he is a national leader and I respect him, but I am a BJP supporter and I favour Narendra Modi. I turned down a Bollywood movie too for the same reason," Sethi told TOI.

So what changed in the last five years? "Rahul has no major achievements to talk about. As a citizen, I had high hopes from him," Sethi added.

Sethi, who was earlier gratified by the compliments from both acquaintances and strangers , is now repulsed by the same words of admiration. He is against the political ideology of Congress and unimpressed by its national president. Moreover, the online jokes on Rahul seem to have had an impact on him.

His wife Gunjan doesn't mind Sethi changing his look. "He sometimes looks like Neil Nitin Mukesh and it is better to be a lookalike of a Bollywood celebrity instead of an Indian politician," she said. Sethi's father, Subhash, had always encouraged him to join the Youth Congress, but he had refused.

