BJP Telangana complains to EC against Congress for spreading morphed video of Amit Shah’s speech on reservations

BJP Telangana has filed a complaint with the state Election Commission, accusing Telangana Congress of disseminating an edited speech of HM Amith Shah on Muslim reservations and urging them to take strict action against individuals engaged in spreading it, stating it as a breach of the Model Code of Conduct.

In its complaint, the Bharatiya Janata Party Telangana unit states, “The said act of the Telangana  Pradesh  Congress  Party  President and their social media in morphing/fabricating Amit Shah’s speech is a brazen violation of the model code of conduct. The deliberate and mischievous act is aimed at misleading the people and creating fear amongst the OBC communities.”

What is the background of the issue?

On April 25, Home Minister Amit Shah, during an election campaign in Siddipet, said that the unconstitutional Muslim reservations would be removed if the BJP came into power. These rights and reservations belong to SC, ST, and OBCs. They will get these benefits, and we will remove the Muslim reservations.”

However, the official Telangana Congress Twitter handle released an edited video with missing Muslim words from the speech of Amit Shah, thus enabling its followers to pick up this line and disseminate the edited video further for public consumption.

Later, INC Telangana removed its post from its X timeline. However, the edited video is in large circulation on WhatsApp and other platforms.

Reacting to this, BJP Telangana on X released a video of the edited and unedited video in a single frame to inform the public of the facts of the Amith Shah speech.

Sumiran, BJP Telangana Social Media In charge, speaking to Organiser said, “Making deep fake videos and editing the original is slowly being normalised if not fact-checked, they will send the wrong signals to society. Similarly, the Congress party and its supporters in Telangana actively indulged in making fake videos to mislead the public. This is a fear mongering technique of the Congress party to appease Muslims.”

The complaint to EC was represented by G Premender Reddy, BJP State General Secretary, K Madhavi, state secretary, G Rama Rao, and K Anthony Reddy.