In 2019, Pawan Kalyan contested two assembly seats in Andhra Pradesh and lost both. His party, Janasena, fielded candidates in 137 seats and won one. That lone winning MLA defected shortly after. By the time the dust settled, he had no representation, no seat, and a political career that looked finished before it had properly started. This Thursday, he releases a film.
That sentence would have read very differently five years ago, when it seemed like he was heading toward the same quiet exit his brother Chiranjeevi had made after his own political experiment ended in a merger and a cabinet posting that nobody remembers. Pawan Kalyan went back to the ground, rebuilt, and in 2024, won 23 out of 23 seats his party contested. He is currently the Deputy Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh.
Ustaad Bhagat Singh, directed by Harish Shankar and releasing on March 19, arrives against that backdrop. But the man walking into theatres this week carries a decade of political history with him, and that changes how the film plays out.
The brother’s shadow
To understand how unusual Pawan Kalyan’s political trajectory is, you have to start with Chiranjeevi, his elder brother, when both were at their peak.
Chiranjeevi launched the Praja Rajyam Party in August 2008, rode a wave of public enthusiasm, won 18 seats and 16 percent of the vote in 2009, and by February 2011 had merged the party into the Indian National Congress. He was given a Rajya Sabha seat, a cabinet posting as Tourism Minister, and when Congress collapsed in 2014, he quietly returned to films. His political chapter is remembered less as a failure than as something that simply went nowhere, a detour that cost him years of screen time and left nothing lasting behind.
Watch: Pawan Kalyan promises ‘real violence’ in Ustaad Bhagat Singh trailer
Pawan Kalyan watched this unfold from close quarters. Then he went ahead and launched his own party, Janasena. anyway in 2014. Pawan unveiled the party flag, spoke about accountability and governance, and made clear he intended to be a political force rather than a figurehead.
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Five years later, when Janasena finally contested on its own, the result was a public humiliation. Janasena won just one MLA seat out of 137 it contested. Pawan personally lost both the constituencies he stood from, Gajuwaka and Bhimavaram.
The rebuild
After 2019, Pawan Kalyan and Janasena shifted focus. The party worked on farmer welfare, illegal sand mining protests, women’s safety issues and land encroachment cases at the ground level. In 2023, he launched a state-wide tour in his customised vehicle called Varahi, maintaining direct contact with voters.
The political calculus changed too. Rather than stake out an independent position, Pawan focused on cementing the alliance between Janasena, the TDP and the BJP. In 2024, the investment paid off. Janasena won all 21 assembly seats and both Lok Sabha constituencies it contested. Pawan won from Pithapuram by over 70,000 votes. On June 12, 2024, he was sworn in as the 11th Deputy Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh.
What politics did to his films
The political journey came at a real cost to his screen career, and Ustaad Bhagat Singh is partly a measure of that cost. After the release of Agnyaathavaasi in January 2018, Pawan Kalyan formally stepped back from films to focus on politics. From late 2017 to late 2019, he committed to nothing new.
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His return to films came through Vakeel Saab in 2021, followed by Bheemla Nayak. But delays in his pending projects made the gap visible. Hari Hara Veera Mallu was announced in early 2020 and hit theatres only in July 2025.
Ustaad Bhagat Singh has had a similar journey. It was announced in September 2021, formally launched in December 2022, and has been in production since April 2023. Shoot delays, political commitments after the 2024 election victory, and post-production work pushed the release well past its originally intended window. The release date was originally set for March 26, 2026, before being moved forward to March 19 to coincide with Ugadi, after the competing release Toxic was postponed.
Now it arrives this Thursday, with Sreeleela and Raashii Khanna as the female leads, Devi Sri Prasad composing the songs and Thaman handling the background score. The Central Board of Film Certification has cleared it with a U/A certificate. Early reactions from overseas censor screenings suggest Pawan Kalyan’s screen presence is intact, with his entry scene drawing particular attention.
Pawan has been candid about why he continues to act while in office. He has said he needs cinema for financial sustenance, as on many occasions he has said he declined to accept salary or special allowances that come with his ministerial role, and that when he does work on a film, he limits himself to two hours a day. The position has not gone without challenge. A petition was filed in the Andhra Pradesh High Court arguing that a serving minister cannot pursue commercial acting simultaneously, and that the dual role undermines public office. The legal question remains unresolved.
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What is clear is that the films he is completing now are commitments he made before June 2024. He has said publicly that he has not signed new projects beyond these.
The more interesting question is what Pawan Kalyan’s political stature does to how audiences receive him on screen. His fanbase was always built on something more personal than just the films. There was an underdog quality to how people related to him, a sense that he was fighting against something. If anything, it has added a chapter to his story that no film could have written.
