The India AI Impact Summit brought together world leaders and Big Tech’s biggest names. As with any event of this magnitude, there were some setbacks. Many attendees complained about the traffic jams and endless lines, and felt the crowds could have been better managed. And a robot dog stole the headlines for all the wrong reasons.
But have those shortcomings been blown out of proportion? Was this an evil plot by the opposition to smear the centrists?
Immediately after the summit, at least 15 content creators on Instagram claimed they were paid by Congress and its intermediaries to denigrate the event. These producers claimed that they were promised between Rs 10,000 and Rs 40,000 to show how “the AI summit is of no use to our country” and “what a waste of money PM Modi is”.
They shared screenshots of these “interactions.” But none of them had the names of the people who approached them.
Unsurprisingly, these videos went viral. At a press conference on February 26, Bharatiya Janata Party’s Samvit Patra said: said This was part of a conspiracy by Rahul Gandhi to tarnish India’s image on the world stage.
India Today Fact Check contacted eight of these influencers to find out who approached them for this alleged campaign and whether they had any connections with the Congress party.
Only one of them responded.
act of disappearance
Vinayak Dev Trivedi, who has more than 72,000 followers on Instagram, said he received a message from a member of the Indian Youth Congress. However, when asked to identify himself, Vinayak refused. He said he felt scared after the issue made national news. Shortly thereafter, he deleted his video.
We reached out to one of the influencers, ‘Unfiltered Akshar’, via email. However, he deactivated his Instagram account. And never responded.
Influencers Vaishnavi Shukla aka “talecomrade”, “__sreashii_”, Vedik Dev, Anushka aka “chhotatoofan”, Preeti Bhati, and Raavi Vishwakarma aka “Charmingchaoss” also deleted their videos from Instagram. You can browse the archive of some videos here, here, hereand here.
Ravi Vishwakarma, who has only about 82,000 followers, also made another video in which he said he would reveal the names of people who contacted him once he had 100,000 followers.
Linked campaign?
One might speculate that if the National Congress Party actually wanted such a campaign, it would approach like-minded content creators. However, if you go through their other posts, you will see that most of these content creators are clearly anti-Congress and supporters of the Bharatiya Janata Party. In fact, Anushka aka ‘Chotatufan’ had some incredulity in her video as to how the Congress could approach her for this election campaign, given that she primarily produces content in support of the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Interestingly, many of these creators followed each other on Instagram. Others have “Team Charming Chaos” listed on their profiles. “Charmingchaoss” is the Instagram handle of Ravi Vishwakarma, one of the influencers in question. This indicates that they may be working together.
Oddly enough, some of these accounts removed “Team Charming Chaoss” from their profiles shortly after we contacted them to ask about this.
family connections
Looking at the content, most of these creators are supporters of the BJP. But for at least one of them, the connection runs deeper. The creator ‘__sreashii_’ is the daughter of Subhash Ghosh, a local Bharatiya Janata Party chief from Atarakai village in Darjeeling. she Posted Instagram Reel tagging her father.
old ties
Additionally, two of these creators Vinayak Trivedi and Ravi Vishwakarmalisted political consultancy firm Varahe Analytics Private Limited as his employer on LinkedIn. According to reports, the company has long been associated with the saffron party.
In 2024, they accused On running a troll farm for the party ahead of the Lok Sabha polls. And in 2023, three of the company’s employees will arrested He is accused of hacking the website of the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee. More recently, the BJP tied up with a rope Varahe Analytics will be responsible for the strategy for the Tamil Nadu Assembly elections.
We called up Chandra Pandey, AVP at Varahe Analytics. Vinayak used to work for the company but left more than a year ago, he said, while Ravi was never an employee. He also said that Valage was not involved in the controversy.
a firm denial
Congress social media head Supriya Srinath flatly denied that the Congress was involved in any such campaign. She said that the moment legal action was mentioned, “many influencers panicked and deleted their videos.”
It’s difficult to conclude who was behind this, as the influencers refused to reveal the names of the people they contacted.
But there is enough circumstantial evidence to show that this is not simply a matter of paid publicity.
There’s more to this than meets the eye.
(Information provided by Rashmi Gupta)
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