Modi Mimicry Row Overshadows Student Grievances Aired At Rahul Gandhi's Indore Event
A comedian's impersonation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Rahul Gandhi's student outreach event in Indore has drawn sustained criticism from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. This has shifted attention from the recruitment and examination grievances that students raised on the same stage.
The leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi held the "Chhatron Ki Goonj" programme in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, on Saturday. According to the Congress transcript of the event, Rahul Gandhi said similar programmes had been held in Kota, Dehradun and Pune, and that the Indore edition was built around the theme "system versus students".
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Ranjit Kisanvanshi said he and a colleague were jailed for four days after a protest outside the state public service commission, and were released on bail by the high court. He alleged repeated paper leaks in examinations conducted by the Vyapam board. Yashika Dhani, a nursing student who enrolled in 2020, said her course should have ended in 2024 but she was still in her third year, with no results and no final-year examinations.
The grandfather, father and sister of an 18-year-old student killed in a building collapse at a paying-guest accommodation in Delhi also spoke. His sister, Priyanshi Jaaj, said the building was later found to have been constructed illegally. Their father said permission existed for two floors and five were built.
Gandhi told the audience that education spending had fallen from 4.6% of the union budget in 2014 to 2.6%, that 1.5 crore fewer scholarships had been given over ten years and that about 10 lakh teaching posts were vacant. He said education was a right rather than a luxury, and a government responsibility.
The row began with a short act by the stand-up comedian Pulkit Mani, who imitated Prime Minister Modi's mannerisms and his manner of speaking to foreign leaders. Mani repeatedly used the phrase "my friend", to which Rahul Gandhi responded: "I am fine. How are you Modi Ji?" The Congress transcript records Mani then saying "Maa ko kursi do", followed by "Setting my friend", and mimicking a coin trick by sticking a one-rupee coin to his forehead. The act also referred to a controversy involving Galgotias University at an AI summit earlier.
The BJP's national account on X posted a video of the act, saying Modi had shown respect and affection to an elderly mother while Rahul Gandhi mocked her at his event. It described this as the difference between a politics of values and one of showmanship.
Pralhad Joshi, the union education minister, said weaponising a student interaction to mock the prime minister's late mother showed a lack of basic human empathy and political culture and accused the Congress of moral bankruptcy.
Uttarakhand chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami wrote that a mother is not a subject of politics and that insulting a mother cannot be acceptable in any civilised society. Union minister Kiren Rijiju asked whether those involved felt no shame in mocking an elderly woman and the prime minister.
CR Kesavan, a BJP spokesperson, called the act foul-mouthed and said Gandhi had shared the stage with people who referred to an elderly woman as a "setting".
The Congress has also circulated clips of the act itself through its official handles. Harish Rawat, a senior Congress leader, described such incidents as a normal part of political discourse in a democracy. The event gained massive traction and attracted thousands of students while the clips from the event have since been shared across social media platforms by lakhs of youngsters and Congress activists, particularly on instagram and direct messaging applications like WhatsApp.