It’s raining stars on both ends of the political spectrum. A day after the ruling BJP flaunted the entry of yesteryear celebrity Jaya Prada into the party fold, Opposition Congress struck even today by getting actress Urmila Matondkar to join its ranks.

After meeting Congress president Rahul Gandhi here, Matondkar formally entered the party, draping a tricolour stole. “I am taking my first steps in active politics and I am here to stay. I grew up living the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Nehru and Sardar Patel and believe in the ideology of the Congress. My decision is to stand against politics which questions people’s freedom and choices, brackets them into compartments and isolates them for holding a certain view,” said the actor, set to contest Mumbai North Lok Sabha seat on the Congress ticket. It is a segment where Govinda had emerged a giant killer in 2004, defeating BJP stalwart Ram Naik.

The BJP has its own share of star dust in the fray. Sitting BJP MPs Hema Malini and Babul Supriyo have been repeated from Mathura and Asansol, respectively. Asansol has an interesting fight coming up after TMC sent actor Moon Moon Sen to challenge Supriyo in its bid to upset the saffron apple cart.

Shatrughan Sinha is the sitting Patna Sahib MP and has spent a better part of his five years in the Lok Sabha attacking PM Narendra Modi and flagging BJP’s disrespect of party elders. Not that every flirtation between a political party and a celebrity works. It can at times turn messy like the Congress learnt the hard way when Haryanvi singer-dancer Sapna Choudhry denied joining it after the party;s UP chief Raj Babbar, another actor-politician, officially welcomed her into the party organisation on Twitter.

The Congress, for its part, is preparing to welcome into its fold “Shotgun” Shatrughan Sinha. After days of back and forth, he is expected to join the Grand Old Party tomorrow and will be pitted against Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad in Patna Sahib.

The hunt for star power still goes on, as is evident from the BJP attempting to field a member of the late Vinod Khanna’s family from his old seat Gurdaspur. There are reports that the BJP is also trying to rope in Sunny Deol and Madhuri Dixit for different seats. Neither has denied having been approached unlike superstar Salman Khan, who recently took to Twitter to say, “Contrary to rumours, I am not contesting elections nor campaigning for any political party.”