- BJP workers protested in multiple cities against Youth Congress disrupting AI Impact Summit
- BJP workers waved black flags at Rahul Gandhi in Mulund, Maharashtra
- Four Youth Congress protesters were arrested, including national and state secretaries
BJP workers, supporters and its youth wing members have come out in large numbers in several locations across the country in protest against the Youth Congress for disrupting the India AI Impact Summit in Delhi.
The BJP protests are spread across Delhi, Surat, Mulund, and Hyderabad, among others.
In Maharashtra's Mulund, where Congress MP Rahul Gandhi came on his way to Thane to give a new surety in a defamation case filed against him by an activist of the BJP's ideological mentor Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), BJP workers showed him black flags.
"Lashkar-e-Rahul," the protesters shouted, along with other anti-Congress slogans.
Yesterday, shirtless Youth Congress members barged into a hall at the AI summit venue in Delhi shouting slogans. Visuals showed the protesters shouted slogans against the government over agreeing to a trade deal with the US.
At least four protesters were arrested - Krishna Hari, Youth Congress national secretary; Kundan Yadav, Bihar Youth Congress state secretary; Ajay Kumar, UP Youth Congress vice president, and Narasimha Yadav, Youth Congress national coordinator. They were on Saturday sent to police remand for five days.
The Youth Congress workers were prepared to disrupt the event, and somehow they acquired the QR codes to enter the high-security venue, sources said. The police used facial recognition software to identify them.
The police are investigating a larger conspiracy, sources said. The men initially planned to enter Bharat Mandapam by pasting printed stickers to black umbrellas. Then they realised the black umbrellas would be taken from them at the gate.
So, they changed their plan and affixed printed stickers to t-shirts, sources said, adding the police are checking from where they got the stickers printed.
Union Minister Bhupender Yadav called the disruption "absolute shamelessness from Congress."
"At a time Bharat is taking strides positioning itself as a global technology powerhouse, Congress is going all out to embarrass the country. This is not political opposition, this is an attempt at sabotaging India's global image. Despicable," he said in a post on X.
The defamation case against Rahul Gandhi was filed by RSS activist Rajesh Kunte, alleging that the Congress leader claimed the Sangh was behind the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.
The false remark maligned the RSS's image, Kunte said in his complaint under section 500 (defamation) of the Indian Penal Code.
