A day after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) announced its list of candidates for the Lok Sabha elections 2024, it’s sitting MP and poll candidates from Barabanki in Uttar Pradesh has become the target of a fake obscene video incident.
A forged obscene video of BJP MP Upendra Singh Rawat, who represents the Barabanki constituency in Uttar Pradesh, has gone viral on social media, pushing his team to file an FIR in the case. Aditya Tripathi, the in-charge of the Kotwali police station, confirmed that a report has been filed against an unknown culprit in the case.
According to the FIR, some people released a doctored objectionable video of the MP to destroy his image after he was declared a BJP candidate. According to police officials, the video spread online shows a man in an unpleasant posture with a woman. It is being alleged that the individual shown in the video is BJP’s Upendra Singh Rawat.
The MP meanwhile stated that his opponents committed this act to tarnish his image as soon as he received the party’s ticket from Barabanki. He also pressed that the video footage making rounds on social media is fully doctored.
While talking to the Jagran news media, Rawat also said that the video is edited using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and that the man seen in the video is someone else. “This video might be old, from 2022-23 and the man is being mistaken for me. This is a deliberate attempt to tarnish my image ahead of the Lok Sabha elections,” he said.
MP’s personal secretary Dinesh Rawat also said that around 7 videos were made viral on Sunday (3rd March) and all of those had the same time frames. “The FIR in the case has been lodged. People behind this will be caught and we demand strict punishment for them,” he added.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP selected Upendra Singh Rawat to contest from the Barabanki seat, replacing Priyanka Singh Rawat, who was the incumbent MP in the constituency.
On Saturday (2nd March), the BJP revealed its initial list of 195 candidates for the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections, which included party heavyweights like Prime Minister Narendra Modi from Varanasi, Amit Shah from Gandhinagar, and Rajnath Singh from Lucknow.
The BJP’s first list of candidates includes 51 seats in Uttar Pradesh, 24 in Madhya Pradesh, 20 in West Bengal, 15 in Gujarat and Rajasthan, 12 in Kerala, nine in Telangana, 11 in Assam, Chhattisgarh, and Jharkhand, five in Delhi, three in Uttarakhand, two in Arunachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir, and one in Goa, Tripura, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and Daman and Diu.
The BJP also has named 28 women and 27 people from scheduled castes to increase the array of backgrounds on the candidate list. The party has also resolved to replace 33 incumbent MPs in their respective constituencies.
The Election Commission of India is expected to announce the dates of 2024 Lok Sabha elections soon. The term of the current Lok Sabha expires on 16th June, so a new Lok Sabha needs to be formed by then. The elections are expected to be held in April and May.
