The Congress party on Monday trolled the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Prime Minister Narendra Modi with an animated video that mocked the ruling party over purported inability to keep Rahul Gandhi out of the Parliament and violence in Manipur.
The video shared by Congress recreates the scene from 'Sholay' film and depicts Prime Minister Modi as Gabbar Singh and top Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders as Gabbar's gang members.
The Congress party on Monday trolled the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Prime Minister Narendra Modi with an animated video that mocked the ruling party over purported inability to keep Rahul Gandhi out of the Parliament and violence in Manipur.
The video was made along the lines of 'Kitne Aadmi The' scene from the iconic film 'Sholay' (1975). The video shared by Congress shows Modi as Gabbar Singh —the villain from 'Sholay'— who scolds top BJP leaders just like Gabbar scolded his gang members in 'Sholay'.
In the video, Modi scolds Union Home Minsiter Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, BJP President JP Nadda, and spokesperson Sambit Patra for failing to keep Rahul out of the Parliament. Shah says "maine aapka namak khaya hai" but gets punished by Modi in the video nonetheless.
The video is captioned "Ek hi Gandhi kaafi hai (Only one Gandhi is enough)."
The remark about not being able to keep one person out of the Parliament was the reference to the disqualification of Rahul Gandhi as a Member of Parliament. Rahul was disqualified as an MP in March after a court in Gujarat convicted him in the 'Modi surname' defamation case. Following his sentencing of two years, as per the law, Rahul was disqualified as a lawmaker, but Congress and Rahul claimed the disqualification was politically motivated. Later, the Supreme Court stayed the conviction and then Rahul's Lok Sabha membership was restored.
"He was one and you are so many. Yet you could not stop him from coming to the Parliament. You could not stop him even with full force," says Modi in Hindi.
Modi goes on to ask Patra, portraying the role of Sambha of 'Sholay', how many times he has spoken from Red Fort. Patra says, "Ten times."
Modi says, "These 10 times I have spoken as I have run the government by sowing the seeds of hatred. I have done one more thing. I have neither listened to Manipur nor to public. I made them listen only 'jumla'. I got the mic in parliament muted, slapped false charges, and all of you reduced my name to dirt. This will have punishment. You will be punished."
Then, one by one, Modi goes on to lob tomatoes at Shah, Singh, and Nadda. This was an apparent reference to skyhigh prices of tomatoes in recent weeks.
Then, as Modi is shown laughing hysterically in the Congress video, the camera moves to Rahul standing on a distant hill, who says, "Dramatic man. He does drama every now and then."
The video by Congress touches upon the themes that the party and the broader Opposition has taken up in recent past to take on the Modi government, such as the prime minister's silence on Manipur, the rising prices, and the alleged politics of hate. The Opposition has repeatedly slammed Modi for not addressing the Manipur crises. The state has been in the grips of ethnic violence since May 3 and over 160 people have been killed and around 60,000 were initially reported to be displaced. It was only after two months that Modi publicly spoke on the violence after a video showing two tribal women paraded naked and groped surfaced online that led to nationwide outrage.