Piyush Goyal taunts Congress and Rahul Gandhi with an AI-made “Zero Check Karlo Bhai” jab

New Delhi: Union Minister Piyush Goyal on Wednesday shared an AI-generated image aimed at Congress leader Rahul Gandhi after the party failed to win any of the 28 seats it contested in the Legislative Council elections across Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar and Karnataka. The image posted by Goyal showed Rahul Gandhi as an employee at a petrol station. A fuel dispenser in the picture featured the names of the four states where the elections were held, while the meter displayed “0.00,” representing the Congress party’s tally in the polls.

Sharing the image on social media, Goyal captioned it, “Zero check karlo Bhai.” The post was part of a wider social media campaign launched by the Bharatiya Janata Party and its leaders after the election results. The BJP used the outcome to attack the Congress, pointing to its failure to win even a single seat in the contests held across the four states. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and several other BJP leaders also mocked the Congress over its repeated criticism of Electronic Voting Machines and its demand for a return to ballot-paper voting.

The ruling party argued that the election results weakened the opposition’s claims about the electoral process. Earlier in the day, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman also responded sharply to Rahul Gandhi, accusing him of politicising issues and making baseless allegations against Indian industry after his comment that the Tata Group was being “criminally destroyed.” “As the Leader of the Opposition, I suggest you refrain from politicising every issue. Also, casually describing commercial and legal matters as criminal is unacceptable,” Sitharaman said in a post on X.

Gandhi had alleged that Indian businesses were being treated as the “plaything” of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah. “Tata is being criminally destroyed, and no business leader dares say a word. How long will you stay silent?

Until they own you?” the Congress leader had said.