Dehradun: Senior Congress leader Harish Rawat on Thursday marched to the Bharatiya Janata Party state headquarters here to object to being portrayed as a “Pakistani spy” in an AI-generated video and demanded proof from the ruling party.
The former chief minister along with his supporters marched from Nehru colony Fountain Chowk towards the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) state headquarters. However, just short of his destination, he was stopped by the police.
There was a brief scuffle between Congressional staff and police. Rawat claimed that the video showed him being shot dead as a traitorous “Pakistani spy”.
“My image is tarnished. If you call a respected citizen of this country a 'Pakistani spy', his (reputation) is dead the moment you do so. By showing me being shot, you are also inciting violence against me,” he said. “We request the Bharatiya Janata Party to either submit evidence or apologize,” the Congress leader said. The former Labor minister alleged that the BJP committed five crimes, including calling him a Pakistani spy, to tarnish the image of him and his party.
He said that the IT wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Uttarakhand has become the focus of controversy by misusing artificial intelligence to create an image of disrupting social harmony.
The Congress leader also accused the Bharatiya Janata Party of spreading the lie that it had declared Friday prayers a public holiday during its tenure since 2017 and asked the party to issue a gazette notification on the same.
Rawat alleged that during the 2022 assembly elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party spread a lie that he had promised to establish an Islamic university if he came to power. However, to date they have been unable to provide evidence to support their claims.
Referring to Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami's repeated assertions about the demographic changes in the state, he asked the Bharatiya Janata Party to provide official details on the extent of the changes from year to year.
Rawat said he would continue to seek answers from the Bharatiya Janata Party on these questions and planned to visit the Bharatiya Janata Party headquarters for six consecutive days in January.
The former chief minister said that his entire focus will be on the Ankita Bhandari murder case for now. He claimed that new facts have come to light and said the CBI should investigate the case.
On Tuesday, Rawat also filed a case against the official BJP handle for allegedly spreading false information against him.
In this regard, he said that if the police do not respond to the complaint, he will approach the court and the public.
BJP's state media in-charge Manveer Singh Chouhan termed the Rawat march a drama. He said Rawat expressed faith in the law and first filed a complaint with the police over the viral video, but marched to the party headquarters the next day.
Mr. Chouhan alleged that Mr. Rawat was attacking the Bharatiya Janata Party because he considered it an obstacle to his appeasement policy.
He said the party has already made it clear that it does not create or broadcast such videos.
(This report is published as part of an auto-generated, syndicated wire feed. Other than the headline, copy has not been edited by ABP Live.)
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