Mumbai/IBNS: Bollywood actor Suniel Shetty drew Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and firebrand Hindutva leader Yogi Adityanath's attention to the recent trend of online campaigns against the Hindi film industry at a meeting in Mumbai.

​Speaking to Adityanath, Shetty said, "Your appeal can stop this #boycottbollywood. We are not suffering because of the cost or subsidy but the audience. We need to bring the audience back to the theatres..."

"A rotten apple in the basket can't generalise all," Shetty told the Chief Minister," the actor added.

Shetty said this during a meeting which Adityanath held with several film personalities in Mumbai to promote Uttar Pradesh as a film-friendly state in India.

Post-pandemic, films of several top Bollywood stars, be it Shah Rukh Khan or Akshay Kumar, faced trouble online with a section of social media users giving boycott calls for desperate reasons.

The latest instance is Shah Rukh's upcoming Hindi film Pathaan, which was caught in the middle of a row over lead actor Deepika Padukone's saffron-coloured bikini in a sequence of song Besharam Rang.

The trend started primarily after several Bollywood stars including Deepika Padukone were summoned by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) in a drug case in the backdrop of the arrest of actor Rhea Chakraborty following the death of Sushant Singh Rajput in 2020.

The campaign against Bollywood went louder after Shah Rukh's son Aryan Khan was arrested in 2021 after he was arrested from a cruise for allegedly possessing drugs.