Patna: The High Court has ordered the Congress party to take down an artificial intelligence-generated “deepfake” video showing Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his late mother, Heeraben Modi, from all social media platforms.
The order, issued today (Wednesday, September 17) by Acting Chief Justice PB Bajantari, came in response to the Bihar Congress unit posting the controversial video on X (formerly Twitter). Captioned in Hindi, “Sahab ke sapno mein aayi maa. Dekhiye rochak samvaad” (Mother came in the sahab’s dream. Watch an interesting conversation), the clip showed a Modi lookalike lying down after alleged “vote stealing”. In the dream, a woman resembling his late mother scolds him for misusing her name in politics.
Congress defended the video as satire, saying it was intended as a tongue-in-cheek critique of the Prime Minister’s politics. But what the party called humour quickly escalated into a political storm. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) described the video as “highly condemnable”, accusing Congress of crossing limits of decency and lowering the political discourse just weeks before the Bihar Assembly elections.
The controversy deepened when BJP Delhi Election Cell convenor Sanket Gupta lodged an FIR at the North Avenue Police Station in Delhi on September 13. He alleged the “deepfake” video tarnished the image of the Prime Minister and his late mother, calling it a gross violation of law, morality, and women’s dignity.
For the BJP, the matter is about more than political rivalry. Leaders argued that families of politicians, particularly those who are no longer alive, must be kept outside the arena of campaign battles. The BJP leaders have flagged the dangers of artificial intelligence being misused to spread offensive or misleading content.
As the crucial Bihar Assembly election edges closer, both the ruling NDA and the opposition INDIA bloc have intensified campaigning. With the state heading to the polls in less than two months, the row has not only sharpened the exchanges between the ruling alliance and the Opposition, but also raised broader questions about the ethical boundaries of AI in politics.
The court’s intervention signals that satire, when fused with technology, will not be judged by the same standards as traditional political humour. In a charged electoral climate, one video has set off a far bigger debate on accountability and decency.