"Acting Blind": Smriti Irani Posts AI Video To Mock Rahul Gandhi Over SIR

Senior BJP leader Smriti Irani skipped naming Rahul Gandhi in her latest salvo on X targeting the Congress leader over his staunch opposition to the Special Intensive Revision exercise, but went a step further. 

To drive home her central point that SIR was carried out across the country to eliminate bogus voters from voting lists, she used an artificial intelligence-modified video which showed the Member of Parliament and Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan discussing the exercise.

"Everyone knows that he is dead and can't vote. He is just not letting it be proved that he has died by twisting rules," the AI-generated Rahul Gandhi tells the police officer in the video, pointing out at Bachchan, who plays a ghost, a character derived from his 2008 hit Bhoothnath.

"Some corrupt officer didn't issue my death certificate; hence, I remained on the voting list. You will be surprised to know that some party cast a vote in my name," says the actor's character in the video, explaining why the government went for the exercise.

Irani described Gandhi in the caption as someone who had been sleeping.

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"You can wake someone who is genuinely asleep, but not someone acting blind just to mislead the nation," she wrote on X.

Irani was hailed as a giant-killer after she defeated Rahul Gandhi in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections from his family pocket borough, Amethi. In 2024, she lost the election from the seat to KL Sharma, a Gandhi family loyalist.

Earlier this year, she made a comeback to the forefront of the BJP after the party appointed her as one of the national general secretaries, just months ahead of crucial assembly elections in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh.

Irani's remarks come amid a raging controversy regarding SIR -- which deleted millions of names from electoral rolls across the country -- following a newspaper report which said two election commissioners weren't informed about several decisions the poll body had taken linked to the exercise.

The report also claimed that the two election commissioners, other than Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, had opposed many of these moves.

The Cockroach Janta Party, a pressure group, and the Congress have launched separate but overlapping protests demanding Kumar's resignation, alleging electoral fraud.

Earlier this week, Gandhi and 12 other INDIA bloc leaders filed a petition before the Supreme Court over alleged large-scale voter deletions and SIR irregularities.

The top court has sought a response from the Election Commission and Kumar on the plea.