Youth Congress chief defends protest at AI summit: 'Won't damage India's image'

A group of 10 Indian Youth Congress (IYC) members stormed into the India AI Impact Summit at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi on Friday (February 20), going shirtless and raising slogans against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the India-US trade deal, and the controversial Epstein Files.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was quick to cry foul — but the Congress's youth wing stood its ground.

'No rocket science'

“No rocket science has happened today," IYC National president Uday Bhanu Chib told The Federal.

“All the people who came here from foreign countries are educated. They know that India is a democratic country, and in a democratic country, democratic practices will happen. This won't damage the image of the country. This was a peaceful protest.”

Also read: Five times Galgotias University was dogged by controversies

Turning the tables sharply on the BJP, he added, “Image is damaged when Modiji's name comes in Epstein Files and when he takes the advice of the world's biggest rapist and goes dancing to Israel. When asked questions about this, they maintain silence and hold no accountability. That damages the country's image.”

Chib further added that the unique protest was about India's trade deal with the US and the growing unemployment in the country. Calling the deal anti-farmer, he told this website that the protest was timed to coincide with what they saw as nothing but a "PR event", mocking the AI summit.

Another IYC functionary told The Federal that the idea behind staging the protest was to show that Prime Minister Narendra Modi made the trade deal with the US under pressure, accusing him of being compromised, a charge that Congress leader Rahul Gandhi also brought against the PM recently.

“Instead of taking India's interests into account, this government has taken care of the US's interests. This has been done in a hurry,” the functionary added.

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The protesters — all IYC office-bearers, including national secretary Krishna Hari — carried T-shirts with slogans reading 'PM is compromised', 'India-US trade deal' and 'Epstein Files'.

BJP calls protest national sabotage

BJP spokesperson Dr Himanshu Shukla said the protest was nothing short of national sabotage.

“Defaming the nation — that’s what Congress does best. Whenever the nation progresses, they don’t like it. They have gone so low as to undermine India's global image during a prestigious international event,” he told The Federal, invoking the Burj Khalifa's tribute to the summit on Thursday (February 19) and French President Emmanuel Macron’s reported admiration for India's AI advances as evidence of the government's success.

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Shukla also compared his party's stance vis-a-vis the Congress when it comes to the country's image. Stressing that the BJP believes in 'Nation First', the BJP official said the saffron party had never chosen to attack images of the nation when the Congress was in power and did something wrong.

Other voices of the party slammed the protest with terms such as “topless, brainless, shameless” and “traitors”.

Protest gave BJP relief amid embarrassments

The summit had already produced some awkward moments for the BJP. The event generated uncomfortable headlines earlier this week — most notably over a robotic dog displayed by Galgotias University that was identified online as the Chinese-manufactured Unitree Go2, commercially available for Rs 2–3 lakh.

A university representative was heard describing it as developed in-house; the university later denied making that claim. But it was asked to vacate the expo. The Opposition also found a reason to attack the government.

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Friday’s protest, in that sense, handed the BJP a lifeline — a chance to reframe the summit's story around Congress’s “anti-India” conduct rather than its own embarrassments, also caused by logistical chaos, alleged mismanagement of the crowd and even theft of AI products from a stall.

The party also tried to project that the global gathering that was disrupted was focused not on politics but technology, which is there for the betterment of future generations, adding more to the ammunition to expose the opposition party’s alleged anti-national stance.

Also read: AI Summit: Have controversies dented India’s credibility? | Capital Beat

Chib, for his part, doesn't buy that framing. He said as the opposition, they made plans to protest after the trade deal with the US came and that Friday's protest reflected the frustration of the unemployed youth across the country.

Whether the shirtless demonstration inside a global tech gathering advances that cause — or simply muddies it — is a question the Congress will have to answer for itself.