The Congress has doubled down on its attack on the Narendra Modi government over Galgotias University allegedly trying to pass off a Chinese robodog as its own innovation, with Rahul Gandhi calling the AI summit “a disorganised PR spectacle” and the party terming the act “brazenly shameless.”
“Instead of leveraging India’s talent and data, the AI summit is a disorganised PR spectacle – Indian data up for sale, Chinese products showcased,” Rahul Gandhi wrote on X.
Earlier in the day, the Congress latched on to the robodog controversy at the AI summit, which eventually led the Indian government to vacate the event, saying that the “Modi government has made a laughing stock of India globally with regard to AI.”
The Congress also claimed that India has become a subject of ridicule in the Chinese media after their robots were showcased as Indian innovations at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi.
“This is truly embarrassing for India. What is even more shameful is the fact that Modi’s minister Ashwini Vaishnaw is indulging in the same falsehood, promoting China’s robots at the Indian summit. The Modi Government has caused irreparable damage to the image of the country – they have reduced AI to a joke – a field in which we could be world leaders given our data power. Brazenly shameless,” it said.
Taking a dig at Ashwini Vaishnaw, the Congress was referring to a video of the event shared by the IT minister, featuring a clip of the robot dog saying: “Bharat’s sovereign models are performing well on global benchmarks. Success of the sovereign stack marks a significant achievement for our engineers and innovators.”
The controversy first emerged when the Noida-based university showcased a surveillance robot called “Orion,” with professor Neha Singh claiming it was part of the university’s Rs 350-crore AI initiative. However, the innovation turned out to be a Chinese-made Unitree Go2, available for Rs 2.3 lakh.
What left the university further red-faced was when netizens took to social media to fact-check a clarification issued by the university, which claimed it had never presented the robodog as its own innovation.
Challenging the university’s version, a community note on X stated that the university explicitly presented the innovations as its own during their AI Summit presentation.
Amid the row, as the government asked the university to vacate the summit, the university said it had not yet received any such communication.
