Animated videos shared by Prime Minister Narendra Modi\u2019s party targeting the opposition Congress and the Muslim community have evoked complaints and outrage, as the political climate in India heats up midway through its six-week long election.<\/p>\n
The videos, shared by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on social media platforms Instagram and X over the last ten days, depict the Congress giving disproportionate benefits to India\u2019s minority Muslim community, at the cost of certain disadvantaged tribal and Hindu caste groups.<\/p>\n
The Congress, in a complaint to the poll watchdog Election Commission, said on Sunday that the video was shared \u201cclearly with an intention to wantonly provocate rioting and promote enmity between different religions\u201d.<\/p>\n
A set of guidelines mutually adopted by political parties for how they should conduct themselves during the election period prohibits them from creating \u201cmutual hatred\u201d between caste, religious or linguistic groups.<\/p>\n
Manipulated videos on social media have also become a contentious issue in this election, such as fake videos showing top Bollywood stars criticising the prime minister.<\/p>\n
On Monday, the commission warned parties against the misuse of AI tools to create deep fakes and told them not to publish and circulate such videos. It also said parties had been directed to remove such content within three hours of it being brought to their notice.<\/p>\n
Modi, the face of the Hindu-nationalist BJP, seeking a rare third consecutive term, had focused his campaign largely on his government\u2019s performance on economic growth and welfare benefits.<\/p>\n
But he changed tack after the first phase of voting on April 19 and his campaign speeches have since become more polarising on religious lines, accusing Congress of planning to redistribute the wealth of the majority Hindus among minority Muslims, who he called \u201cinfiltrators\u201d who have \u201cmore children\u201d.<\/p>\n
The videos shared by the BJP over the last ten days, one of which has since been taken down, illustrated the same message.<\/p>\n
A 17-second video shared by a state unit of BJP on May 4, with over 8.5 million views, shows a character resembling Congress leader Rahul Gandhi feeding \u201cfunds\u201d to a bird in a skullcap, which eventually pushes out from their common nest three other birds representing other disadvantaged groups.<\/p>\n
The Congress has filed a police complaint against BJP leaders for the video, BJP\u2019s head of information and technology Amit Malviya said on X.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Congress should in fact thank the BJP for taking their manifesto to the people in a manner that even they couldnt,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
The video has elicited outrage. Nitasha Kaul, a politics professor at London\u2019s Westminster University said on X that the video was a \u201cstraightforward 1930s Germany style cartoon\u201d.<\/p>\n
Congress, in its election manifesto, has promised to tackle India\u2019s economic inequality by conducting a socio-economic caste census and extending affirmative action. It said it will ensure that minorities receive \u201ctheir fair share\u201d of education, economic and healthcare opportunities.<\/p>\n
An Election Commission spokesperson, the BJP\u2019s Malviya and Congress spokespersons did not respond to requests seeking comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Animated videos shared by Prime Minister Narendra Modi\u2019s party targeting the opposition Congress and the Muslim community have evoked complaints and outrage, as the political climate in India heats up midway through its six-week long election. The videos, shared by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on social media platforms Instagram and X over the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":64399,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64379"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64401,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64379\/revisions\/64401"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}