Bihar Congress to now probe viral AI video of Modi's deceased mother

Sources in the Congress’ Bihar unit told The Federal that a six-member fact-finding team is also investigating whether circulating the video was a “lapse of judgment or deliberate mischief”.

Probe ordered

Meanwhile, the agency hired to generate video content for the Bihar Congress’ social media handles has been “barred” from creating new content till the fact-finding team concludes its inquiry. Curiously though, the video has not been deleted by the party despite the political opprobrium it has triggered.

The committee comprises of Bihar Pradesh Congress Committee (BPCC) president Rajesh Ram, the AICC’s Bihar in-charge Krishna Allavaru, Congress Legislature Party chief Shakeel Ahmed Khan, the state unit’s media department chief Rajesh Rathorre, Pranav Vachharajani, national convenor of the AICC’s social media and digital platforms and Bihar war-room in-charge Gaurav Kumar.

Additionally, sources said Pawan Khera, the Congress’ media and publicity department chief, will also be overseeing the probe.

Also read: Congress' AI video of Modi's mother: BJP slams Rahul, Grand Alliance in Bihar

Khera, ironically, had stridently defended the video after the BJP used it to slam Lok Sabha’s Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi for “taking public discourse to its nadir by getting his party members to repeatedly insult the Prime Minister and his late mother”.

The 'dream' video

The 36-second AI-generated video, which had been shared on the Bihar Congress’ X handle on the evening of September 10, features a ‘dream sequence’ in which Heeraben is heard reprimanding Modi, “you made me stand in long notebandi queues (a reference to the Prime Minister’s controversial demonetization move of 2016), got reels made of washing my feet and now you are doing politics in my name in Bihar; getting posters and banners printed of my insult. You are once again trying nautanki (theatrics) in Bihar, how low would you fall for politics.”

A day later, the backlash from the BJP and its NDA partners was scorching and the row once again dragged Modi’s late mother into the centre an increasingly acerbic poll campaign, weeks after Congress ally RJD’s senior leader Tejashwi Yadav had adroitly fended off the Prime Minister’s tirade against Rahul and him for “getting my late mother abused”.

Congress defends video

The Congress’ initial reaction to the BJP’s barbs was to launch a counter-offensive. Both Khera and his counterpart in the party’s Bihar unit Rajesh Rathorre had defended the video.

Also read: BJP condemns AI video of PM Modi’s late mother; Congress refutes allegations

“Where is the disrespect shown to his (Modi’s) late mother? Show me one word, one gesture… It is the duty of parents to educate their children. She is only educating her child and if the child thinks that it is disrespectful towards him, it is his headache, not mine. Why does the BJP try to make an issue out of everything and try to generate fake sympathy? There is no fake sympathy for these things anymore. Modi cannot do ‘touch me not’ politics, he is in politics and he needs to take everything, even a sense of humour of the Opposition properly and actually there is no humour in it, there is naseehat (advice) in this,” Khera had said.

Rathorre too had told The Federal that the video showed Heeraben in a “dignified way”. “Every good mother scolds his worthless son when he does wrong things; if a child is worthless, it is not the mother’s fault,” Rathorre had said.

Lapse or mischief?

Now, while Khera will be supervising the fact-finding team’s inquiry into the video, Rathorre will be part of the party’s probe team. “We are looking into how this could happen. Was it a lapse of judgment or deliberate mischief,” a source familiar with the ongoing intra-party inquiry told The Federal on Sunday (September 14).

It was, however, unclear whether the Congress had decided to institute the probe following its own assessment of potential political damage that the video and the BJP’s backlash against it could cause the Congress in the poll-bound state or if the decision was forced by the party’s senior Grand Alliance partner, the RJD, which, as reported earlier by The Federal, had cautioned the Congress leadership to refrain from sharing such content in the future.

Sources familiar with the initial deliberations within the fact-finding team said that the video had been posted on social media “without the mandatory clearance” of senior leaders of the Bihar Congress and the AICC’s social media department.

No clearance

The video, it is learnt, was not created “in-house” but by an “external agency” that had been engaged by the Bihar Congress for generating social media content, especially videos, which could be used in the run-up to the Bihar assembly polls.

Also read: Public empathy for Modi's mother unlikely to translate into votes in Bihar

As per the system devised by the party for circulating any content from its official social media handles, the content created by the external agency is to first be shared in a Whatsapp group of senior leaders, including the social media head of the state unit and the national social media coordinator in-charge of the state concerned, who have the authority to clear such content for circulation on public platforms.

Sources said that while the controversial video was indeed shared for the requisite approval in the relevant Whatsapp group of Bihar Congress, it made its way to the state unit’s X handle “without the necessary clearance”.

“It was posted in the group but nobody had cleared it (for being posted on the official Bihar Congress X handle),” a member of the Bihar Congress’ social media team told The Federal. He added further that such lapses had been happening even during Rahul Gandhi’s Voter Adhikar Yatra when “a number of videos had been posted on the state media handles of the party without clearance, since nobody was available to look into what was going public”.

Ostensibly, since none of those videos were ‘politically sensitive’ in nature and did not trigger any alarm, sources said, the lapses continued right up till the AI-generated video of Modi and Heeraben exploded into a raging controversy.

Impact on Bihar polls

While the party finally woke up from its stupor following the uproar triggered by the BJP, Congress sources concede that it may already be too late to control the damage done already from the video as senior party leaders, including Khera, had already defended it stoutly. The best the Congress can now hope for is that such incidents do not recur again as Bihar inches closer to elections.

Also read: Opposition in Bihar to counter Modi’s ‘mother insult’ charge with aggression

The fact-finding team is expected to outline additional measures to prevent such blunders that could cost the party dear in an election the Congress and its Grand Alliance partners believe could stall the BJP victory run at the hustings that had resumed with Haryana, Maharashtra and Delhi soon after the shockers from the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.