By Diti Pujara
How far is taking something too far during election campaigning? With each social media post, Bharatiya Janata Party’s Assam unit hits a new low.
Over the past several weeks, Assam BJP has incessantly shared posts on X targeting Muslims. So much so that on October 7, the Supreme Court issued a notice to BJP Assam Pradesh (@BJP4Assam) and social media platform X to respond to pleas seeking the removal of a post that vilified Muslims in the state. The public interest litigation was filed by former Patna high court judge Anjana Prakash and journalist Qurban Ali and sought the removal of a September 15 post by the party unit, which the applicants believed was provocative and went against the secular fabric of the nation.
On September 18, Congress’s Assam unit also filed a complaint against BJP Assam with the state police for the same post. Congress’s FIR said that such content was akin to “promoting enmity between religious groups, and violation of the model code of conduct”.
The Post That Sparked Controversy
On September 15, the X account of BJP Assam Pradesh shared an AI-generated video showing a glimpse of “Assam without BJP”.
The video, meant to target the Congress and its leader, Gaurav Gogoi, had visuals of Muslims crowding the state. It implied that if the BJP wasn’t ruling Assam, not only would beef be legalised, but the Congress party would run the state with Pakistan’s interests in mind.
The video showed Muslim “infiltrators” entering the state and acquiring government land. The AI footage also showed men in skull caps, beards and lungis chopping beef by the roadside while Muslim men and burqa-clad women crowded the state’s tea estates and public spaces, such as the Guwahati airport, theme park, zoo, stadium and the town. The 31-second ad ended with the warning that without the BJP, Assam would have a 90% Muslim population. “Choose your vote carefully,” it said. The caption read, “We can’t let this dream of Paaijaan to be true!!”
The post had nearly 5 million views and 19,000 likes at the time this article was written. As of October 9, the post had been deleted. Here’s an archived version of the post and below is a screen recording of the post when it was live.
This story was originally published in altnews.in. Read the full story here.