Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday attacked the Congress for turning a global event like the India AI Impact Summit into an arena of “gandi aur nangi” (dirty and shameless) politics, after its youth wing leaders on Friday staged a shirtless protest at the event.Speaking at the inauguration of the Delhi-Meerut rapid metro rail project, PM Modi said the protest by Congress workers showed the party had become “ideologically bankrupt” and “impoverished”. He said the Congress had become a liability and even its allies (referring to comments by Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Arvind Sawant, who disapproved of the protest) had condemned the act and understood that the party committed sins and others had to pay for them.“You are already naked. Why did you feel the need to take off your clothes? What the Congress leaders did there shows how ideologically bankrupt and impoverished the oldest party of the country has become. The Congress is busy defaming its own country. Some political parties cannot digest India’s success. We just witnessed the world’s largest AI conference in India. But what did the Congress and its ecosystem do? The Congress turned a global event for India into a platform for its dirty and naked politics,” Modi said while addressing the gathering in Meerut.The Prime Minister asserted that the Congress should have remembered the summit was “not a BJP event”. “The Congress leaders hate me. They want to dig my grave. They don’t even hesitate to insult my mother. It should have remembered that the AI summit was not a BJP event and no BJP leader was present at that time.This was national work. But the Congress broke the decorum. This corrupt policy is being condemned by the entire country,” he said.A group of Youth Congress workers on February 20 barged into a hall at the AI summit, removed their shirts and shouted slogans against the government over agreeing to a trade deal with the US. Some protesters were seen holding T-shirts with images of PM Modi and US President Donald Trump.Four protesters, identified as Krishna Hari, Youth Congress national secretary; Kundan Yadav, Bihar Youth Congress state secretary; Ajay Kumar, UP Youth Congress vice-president; and Narasimha Yadav, Youth Congress national coordinator, were arrested. They were produced before a court on February 21 and sent to five days of police remand.Meanwhile, senior Congress leader Pawan Khera described the summit as a “national embarrassment” and accused the ruling party of prioritising optics over substance.Khera’s critique focused on the absence of mention of the Galgotias University controversy in the PM’s “Mann ki Baat” programme. The university has faced intense social media scrutiny following the summit, with critics labelling it a symbol of staged innovation.In a post on X, Khera said, “BJP leaders were briefed to flood every platform with praise for ‘Mann Ki Baat’ while ignoring the national embarrassment of the university at the summit.”Calling the BJP as an “echo-chamber of yes-men”, he said there was “no remorse, no apology and no assurance of higher standards in the future”.
