Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala:

BJP leader Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Sunday said that it is disappointing that students have been disadvantaged, adding that the government has taken good steps on the NEET UG exam issue.

“It is disappointing that students have been disadvantaged. But as Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan has said the government is committed to making sure that these examinations are done in a secure manner and those who are meritorious are the ones who benefit from these exams, not those who are corrupt and crooked. I think the steps that have been taken by the government of India are good and solid steps that will give a lot of confidence to the students,” Mr Chandrasekhar told ANI.

The National Testing Agency (NTA), which conducted the NEET-UG exams, is facing criticism over alleged irregularities in the exams. This resulted in several protests across the country, with protestors and political parties demanding to disband the NTA.

An unprecedented 67 candidates achieved a perfect score of 720 marks out of 720, which added to the concerns.

The Ministry of Education said it has constituted a high-level committee of experts to make recommendations on reforms in the mechanism of the examination process, improvements in data security protocols and the functioning of the NTA.

The 7-member committee, led by ISRO former chairman Dr K. Radhakrishnan, will submit its report to the ministry in the next two months.

“In order to ensure transparent, smooth and fair conduct of examinations through the National Testing Agency (NTA), the Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Education constituted a High-Level Committee of Experts to make recommendations on reform in the mechanism of examination process improvement in data security protocols and the structure and functioning of National Testing Agency,” the ministry said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

New Delhi:

Former Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar, who had offered US billionaire Elon Musk a “tutorial” on Indian Electronic Voting Machines, today doubled down on his argument, saying going by the Tesla chief’s logic, “every Tesla car can be hacked”.

Responding to Mr Musk’s claim that “everything can be hacked”, Mr Chandrasekhar, who headed the Union ministry of Electronics and Information Technology during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s second tenure, said, “I think he is factually incorrect in saying that”.

“A calculator or a toaster cannot be hacked. Therefore, there is a limit in terms of where this paradigm of hacking can extend,” he told news agency ANI. “He (Elon Musk) is factually wrong… To claim that there cannot be a secure digital product in the world is to then say that every Tesla car can be hacked,” he added.

Mr Musk would be right only if the machines in question are connected like phones or computers, which EVMs are not, Mr Chandrasekhar had earlier argued. “Elon Musk’s view may apply to the US and other places – where they use regular compute platforms to build internet-connected voting machines,” he had said.

“Elon Musk has not understood what the Indian EVM is. Indian EVMs do not lend themselves to being hacked because they are precisely a very limited-intelligence device,” he explained today.

The Tesla chief had set the ball rolling over the weekend with his post questioning the reliability of EVMs.

“We should eliminate electronic voting machines. The risk of being hacked by humans or AI, while small, is still too high,” he had posted on X in response to Independent US Presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr’s post on reports that Puerto Rico’s elections saw voting irregularities in hundreds of EVMs.

As the Opposition used the post to support its reservations about EVMs, Mr Chandrasekhar claimed that Mr Musk’s comment was a “huge sweeping generalisation”.

“This is a huge sweeping generalisation statement that implies no one can build secure digital hardware. Wrong,” replied the former minister. “No connectivity, no bluetooth, wifi, Internet; there is no way in. Factory-programmed controllers that cannot be reprogrammed. Electronic voting machines can be architected and built right as India has done. We would be happy to run a tutorial, Elon,” his post read.

“Anything can be hacked,” shot back Mr Musk.

Coming amid reports that claimed a relative of Ravindra Waikar, Shiv Sena MP from Mumbai North West, was using a phone that could be connected to an EVM, Mr Musk’s comments fuelled massive Opposition criticism.

Congress’s Rahul Gandhi said EVMs in India “are a ‘black box” and “nobody is allowed to scrutinize them”. “Serious concerns are being raised about transparency in our electoral process,” he added.

“When risks of EVM tampering are being flagged in several elections across the world and well-known technology experts are flagging risks, the BJP must clear the air on why they are bent on using EVMs,” posted Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav.

Rajya Sabha MP and Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) leader Priyanka Chaturvedi flagged the reports on Mumbai election. “This is a fraud at the highest level and yet the @ECISVEEP continues to sleep,” she said in a post on X.

Calls for a return to paper ballot has already been decisively turned down by the Supreme Court, which said the machines offer significant advantages. They have eliminated booth capturing and invalid votes, reduce paper wastage and  expedite the counting process minimizing errors, the judges have said.
   

New Delhi:

Following the Congress’s announcement that Priyanka Gandhi Vadra will contest from Wayanad, while Rahul Gandhi will retain the Raebareli seat, former Union Minister and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Rajeev Chandrashekhar on Monday hit out at the party, alleging that there is “shamelessness” and the party is imposing one member after another of their dynasty on voters of Wayanad.

Earlier today, Congress National President Mallikarjun Kharge announced that Priyanka Gandhi will contest from the Wayanad Lok Sabha seat, while her brother and leader Rahul Gandhi will retain the party’s bastion- Raebareli.

Taking to ‘X’, Mr Chandrashekhar wrote, “There is shamelessness and there is Cong type of shamelessness – imposing one member after another of their dynasty on voters of Wayanad – after shamelessly hiding the fact that Rahul was contesting from another constituency.”

There is shamelessness and there is Cong type of shamelessness – imposing one member after another of their dynasty on voters of Wayanad – after shamelessly hiding the fact that Rahul was contesting from another constituency.

This pattern of betrayal is reason why Cong has seen… https://t.co/W6hKnhKMtA

— Rajeev Chandrasekhar (@RajeevRC_X) June 17, 2024

There is shamelessness and there is Cong type of shamelessness – imposing one member after another of their dynasty on voters of Wayanad – after shamelessly hiding the fact that Rahul was contesting from another constituency.

The BJP leader further alleged that this pattern of betrayal is the reason why the party has witnessed defeat for a consecutive third term.

“This pattern of betrayal is the reason why Cong has seen 3rd poll defeat under Rahul Gandhi”, he said.

The decision of the Congress party came after top party leaders, including Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, general secretaries KC Venugopal and Priyanka Gandhi held a meeting at the residence of Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge to decide which Lok Sabha seat Rahul Gandhi would retain.

Rahul Gandhi, who contested from two seats — Rae Bareli and Wayanad, won both constituencies by huge margins.

Rahul Gandhi won the seat of Rae Bareli by defeating BJP’s Dinesh Pratap Singh by a margin of 3,90,030 votes. Gandhi had contested this seat aiming to save the lone bastion of the party in the state after he lost Amethi in 2019.

The Congress leader also won the seat of Wayanad, which paved his entry to the Lok Sabha in 2019. He defeated Communist Party of India-Marxist candidate Annie Raja by 3,64,422 votes.

Meanwhile, Priyanka Gandhi is finally making her electoral debut from the Wayanad seat after Rahul Gandhi vacated the seat by keeping the family bastion of the Raebareli seat.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

New Delhi:

Tesla chief Elon Musk and former Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar have started a debate on X (formerly Twitter) on whether the world should switch to paper voting and discard electronic voting machines (EVMs) over possible risks of being hacked and manipulated.

Later, Congress MP Rahul Gandhi and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav also joined in, backing Mr Musk’s apprehension of EVMs.

Mr Musk set the ball rolling with his post questioning EVMs’ reliability, referring to media reports that Puerto Rico’s elections saw voting irregularities in hundreds of EVMs.

“Luckily, there was a paper trail so the problem was identified and vote tallies corrected,” independent US presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr said in a post on X.

Mr Chandrasekhar, who headed the electronics and information technology ministry in the previous government, in his reply to Mr Musk indicated the X owner’s comment made it seem like “no one can build secure digital hardware.”

The former Union Minister said he’d be happy to run a tutorial for Mr Musk on how to build a secure EVM.

“This is a huge sweeping generalisation statement that implies no one can build secure digital hardware. Wrong. Elon Musk’s view may apply to the US and other places – where they use regular compute platforms to build internet-connected voting machines,” Mr Chandrasekhar said in a reply to Mr Musk’s post that EVMs weren’t reliable.

This is a huge sweeping generalization statement that implies no one can build secure digital hardware. Wrong. @elonmusk ‘s view may apply to US n other places – where they use regular compute platforms to build Internet connected Voting machines.

But Indian EVMs are custom… https://t.co/GiaCqU1n7O

— Rajeev Chandrasekhar (@RajeevRC_X) June 16, 2024

India used EVMs in the recently held Lok Sabha elections. Many political leaders, mostly from the Opposition parties, had said the same thing as Mr Musk has said, i.e. EVMs need to be replaced with paper voting, for any doubt in voters’ minds can wipe out trust from the entire democratic exercise.

Rahul Gandhi, Akhilesh Yadav Join EVM Debate

Mr Gandhi, too, has been a fierce critic of EVMs. “EVMs in India are a ‘black box,’ and nobody is allowed to scrutinise them. Serious concerns are being raised about transparency in our electoral process. Democracy ends up becoming a sham and prone to fraud when institutions lack accountability,” Mr Gandhi said in response to Mr Musk’s post.

EVMs in India are a “black box,” and nobody is allowed to scrutinize them.

Serious concerns are being raised about transparency in our electoral process.

Democracy ends up becoming a sham and prone to fraud when institutions lack accountability. https://t.co/nysn5S8DCFpic.twitter.com/7sdTWJXOAb

— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) June 16, 2024

His Opposition INDIA bloc ally, Mr Yadav, said technology experts around the world are openly writing about the dangers of EVM tampering. “We reiterate our demand that all future elections be conducted using ballot papers,” Mr Yadav said.

Referring to Indian EVMs, Mr Chandrasekhar said they are custom designed and isolated from any kind of network or media. “… no connectivity, no Bluetooth, Wi-FI, internet, i.e. there is no way in. (There are) factory programmed controllers that cannot be reprogrammed. Electronic voting machines can be… built right as India has done…”

To this, Mr Musk replied, “Anything can be hacked”.

The former Union Minister agreed that “anything is possible”, at least in theory. “… With quantum compute, I can decrypt any level of encryption. With lab-level tech and plenty of resources, I can hack any digital hardware/system including the flight controls of a glass cockpit of a jet, etc. But that’s a different type of conversation from EVMs being secure and reliable…”

The Supreme Court has also ruled it can’t dictate the functioning of the Election Commission (EC), a constitutional authority, on the matter of EVMs. The EC has long maintained India’s EVMs are foolproof.

An EVM has a control unit and a balloting unit. These are connected by a cable. These are also connected with a VVPAT — Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail — machine. This machine enables a voter to see if the vote was cast properly and went to the candidate he/she supports.

European nations have reverted to the ballot voting system.

New Delhi:

Former Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar said on Sunday that Elon Musk’s take on eliminating electronic voting machines (EVMs) from voting is a “huge sweeping generalisation” which holds no truth, inviting the Tesla CEO to come and learn some lessons in India.

Responding to the tech billionaire’s post on X, which alleged that electronic voting machines should be eliminated as the “risk of being hacked by humans or AI, while small, is still too high,” Mr Chandrasekhar said this is not the case at all.

READ | “We Should Eliminate EVMs”: Elon Musk Flags Risk Of Poll Rigging

“This is a huge sweeping generalisation statement that implies no one can build secure digital hardware. Wrong,” replied the former minister.

This is a huge sweeping generalization statement that implies no one can build secure digital hardware. Wrong. @elonmusk ‘s view may apply to US n other places – where they use regular compute platforms to build Internet connected Voting machines.

But Indian EVMs are custom… https://t.co/GiaCqU1n7O

— Rajeev Chandrasekhar (@RajeevRC_X) June 16, 2024

According to Mr Chandrasekhar, Mr Musk’s view may apply to the US and other places where they use regular computing platforms to build “Internet-connected Voting machines.”

Mr Musk had reacted to Puerto Rico’s primary elections which allegedly experienced voting irregularities.

Mr Chandrasekhar further rejected Mr Musk’s statement, saying that Indian EVMs are custom-designed, secure and isolated from any network or media.

“No connectivity, no bluetooth, wifi, Internet; there is no way in. Factory-programmed controllers that cannot be reprogrammed,” informed the former minister.

“Electronic voting machines can be architected and built right as India has done. We would be happy to run a tutorial, Elon,” Mr Chandrasekhar added.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

New Delhi:

The second of seven phases of the Lok Sabha polls will take place on Friday and the stage is set for exciting contests in some of the 88 constituencies across 13 states and Union Territories where votes will be cast.

Here’s A Look At Five Gripping Fixtures:

Rahul Gandhi Vs Annie Raja 

Polling will be carried out in all 20 seats in Kerala and the state will see some of the most-watched face-offs. In Wayanad, sitting MP and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi will contest for the second time and his primary opponent in the largely bipolar state is the CPI’s Annie Raja. While it is unclear whether Mr Gandhi will also contest from Amethi, the Gandhi family bastion where he suffered a shock defeat in 2019 to the BJP’s Smriti Irani, winning this seat will be crucial for the Congress leader either way.

In 2019, Mr Gandhi had defeated the CPI candidate from Wayanad, PP Suneer, by a margin of over 4 lakh votes.

Ms Raja, a member of the national executive of the CPI and the wife of party general secretary D Raja, has criticised Rahul Gandhi and promised more consistent representation. The CPM-led LDF government in the state has also been critical of Mr Gandhi and the attacks against him have been led by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, drawing counter-attacks from the Congress. 

The sharp exchanges are all the more significant given that the Congress and the Left Front are partners in the INDIA bloc at the Centre but are giving no quarter to each other in their battle in the state. The Congress had won 15 of the 20 seats in 2019.

Giving the contest another interesting dimension is that the BJP has fielded its state president K Surendran from Wayanad as part of a concerted effort to open its Lok Sabha account in the state and do better in the south in general. In an earlier interview with NDTV, Mr Surendran said he stood a good chance of winning the seat because people are disappointed with the work done by Rahul Gandhi. 

Shashi Tharoor Vs Rajeev Chandrasekhar

About 400 km south of Wayanad lies Kerala’s capital of Thiruvananthapuram, which is going to see a battle of heavyweights. The Congress’ Shashi Tharoor, a three-time MP from the constituency, will face off against Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar. 

Despite having held the seat for three terms, Mr Tharoor is seen as a popular MP and has previously said that the only way the BJP’s claim of winning seats in the double digits in Kerala can be true is if both digits are zero. “The issue with the BJP is that they don’t understand Kerala’s history and culture… Communalism cannot go beyond a small limit here,” he had said. 

Mr Chandrasekhar, who is making his electoral debut, has said Mr Tharoor has failed to get any work done in the constituency and that the contest would be between the “politics of performance” – a reference to the BJP-led central government’s work – and “15 years of non-performance”

The third most-watched candidate from the seat is the CPI’s Pannyan Raveendran, a veteran leader who was the MP from Thiruvananthapuram – winning a bypoll in 2005 – before Mr Tharoor began his winning streak. The CPI leader had also contested the Kerala Assembly polls in 2011, but lost to a Congress leader. 

KC Venugopal Vs AM Ariff

Alappuzha is the only seat in Kerala that the CPM had won in 2019 and what makes the constituency even more interesting is that it will see a contest between senior Congress leader KC Venugopal, who was elected from there in 2009 and 2014, and the sitting MP, the CPM’s AM Ariff.

Mr Venugopal, who is a Rajya Sabha MP and the General Secretary (Organisation) of the Congress, had decided not to contest the Lok Sabha polls in 2019 because he had larger responsibilities and said he is doing so this time because Congress workers want him to. 

The sitting MP, Mr Ariff, has released a 12-page booklet listing out his achievements, many of which have been claimed by the Congress and the BJP as their own. He has also dismissed the Congress’ claim of winning all 20 Lok Sabha constituencies in the state and alleged that the party does this during every election.

The third key candidate in the seat is the BJP’s Sobha Surendran, who has said the people will vote for her to make her part of PM Narendra Modi’s team. “During the UPA tenure, India’s economy was down like those of Pakistan and Sri Lanka in recent times. But ten years under Narendra Modi’s rule and India has become the fifth largest economy,” she was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.

Arun Govil vs Sunita Verma 

Over in Uttar Pradesh, eight of whose 80 constituencies are going to the polls in the second phase, Meerut is seeing a fight in which one of the contestants is being worshipped, literally, by some supporters. The BJP’s Arun Govil played the role of Lord Ram in the popular TV series Ramayan and, despite the godlike status accorded to him by some, he faces a tough contest in the seat from the Samajwadi Party’s Sunita Verma and the BSP’s Devvrat Tyagi. 

Mr Govil, who is making his electoral debut and lives in Mumbai, has been criticised for being an outsider and has admitted that he does not have a very strong understanding of local issues, but has promised to move to Meerut and speak to people to understand their problems after he is elected. The BJP, which had won 62 of UP’s 80 constituencies in 2019, will be fancying its chances in Meerut where it has been on a winning streak since 2009 and has won a total of six times. 

The main contender against Mr Govil is the Samajwadi Party’s Sunita Verma, who is a former mayor of the city. The finalisation of the face by the party, however, was a long-drawn-out affair and involved two declared candidates – Bhanu Pratap Singh and Atul Pradhan – being dropped. Ms Verma was earlier with the Bahujan Samaj Party.

Tejasvi Surya Vs Sowmya Reddy

The Bengaluru South Lok Sabha constituency, which has elected only BJP candidates since 1991, will see a battle between Tejasvi Surya and the Congress’ Sowmya Reddy. Mr Surya was elected with a margin of over 3 lakh votes in 2019, but the Congress is hoping that Ms Reddy’s pedigree – she is the daughter of state transport minister Ramalinga Reddy – and the party’s winning performance in the Assembly polls last year will swing things in its favour.

Mr Surya, 33, who is the national president of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, the youth wing of the BJP,  has expressed confidence that his work towards improving Bengaluru’s infrastructure will win him another term. Another thing that is working in the BJP’s favour is that the Congress has emerged victorious in the constituency only once since 1977, when former chief minister R Gundu Rao was elected in the 1989 Lok Sabha polls. 

Ms Reddy, 41, is banking on the Congress’ guarantees, which had helped it win last year’s Assembly elections, to help it buck the trend. The Congress leader is a former MLA from Jayanagar and lost the constituency by just 16 votes was heart-broken when she lost by a mere 16 votes in her re-election bid in this city constituency in the Assembly elections last year.

Claiming that people are disappointed with Mr Surya because he has not been accessible and did not speak up for Karnataka in Parliament, Ms Reddy told PTI, “All he (Mr Surya) has been doing is spreading hate and doing divisive politics.” 

New Delhi:

The Congress’ Shashi Tharoor is bidding for a four-peat of wins from Thiruvananthapuram, but arguably faces his toughest test yet in Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar.

The senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader, meanwhile, must shake off controversy over his poll affidavit – which said his taxable income for FY2021/22 was Rs 680, compared to Rs 17.5 lakh for FY20 – to win in a state that tends to look unfavourably on the BJP’s politics.

Mr Chandrasekhar has said he expects “the politics of performance” to give him an edge, and that the voters of Thiruvananthapuram would recognise the Congress and Shashi Tharoor had done nothing over the past 15 years. “People are sensible… they know.”

With a hat-trick of wins behind him, Mr Tharoor has exuded confidence.

Speaking to NDTV this week, he said the BJP was welcome to open a bank account in the state, but they should not expect any other kind, meaning they will not win any seats.

In 2019 Mr Tharoor, also an ex-Union Minister, scored his biggest win yet, polling over four lakh votes and more than 40 per cent of the vote share. He beat Kummanam Rajasekharan by nearly one lakh votes. The Communist Party of India’s C Divakaran was a distant third.

The win underlined Mr Tharoor’s hold; he won six of the seven Assembly segments in the seat, losing only Nemom by less than 12,000 votes. This time the CPI – which is part of the ruling Left Democratic Front – has turned to 78-year-old veteran Pannyan Raveendran.

That the CPI chose to field a candidate raised eyebrows because the party is, on paper, part of the Congress-led INDIA opposition bloc.

The Congress has played down the import of this contest. Party comms boss Jairam Ramesh emphasised that all Left parties remain a part of the group but “this does not preclude group partners from contesting against each other in different states, especially in Kerala”.

The choice of Mr Raveendran is to make a point to voters; the Left leader is quite unlike his rivals, who share similarities despite being on opposite ends of the political spectrum.

READ | “Irony Died When…”: Minister’s Jibe At Shashi Tharoor In Affidavit Row

Mr Tharoor and Mr Chandrasekhar are both highly educated professionals who turned to politics after careers in the diplomatic service and the IT industry.

Mr Raveendran, meanwhile, dropped out of middle school, has been a member of the party since his teen years, and has a strong distaste for the trappings of a politician’s life.

Perhaps as significantly, Mr Raveendran is a former MP from Thiruvananthapuram.

He won the seat in 2005 – after the party’s PK Vasudevan Nair, the sitting MP and a former Chief Minister died. And he did so by polling over 50 per cent of the votes. He chose not to defend his seat in the next full election – 2009 – when Mr Tharoor claimed his first win.

Mr Raveendran’s campaign, at least on a national level, has flown under the radar, particularly after the Congress and BJP began sparring over Mr Chandrasekhar’s poll affidavit, which led to Mr Tharoor being sued for defamation and getting a “strict warning” from the election Commission.

READ | “Strict Warning” To Shashi Tharoor Over Remark On Union Minister

The Congress leader, though, is confident of a win.

Thiruvananthapuram isn’t the only Kerala seat to feature an INDIA vs INDIA contest; in Wayanad the CPI has fielded Annie Raja against Mr Gandhi, while the Communist Party of India (Marxist), also an INDIA member, has nominated sitting Alappuzha MP AM Ariff against senior Congress leader KC Venugopal, who won this seat in 2014.

For the CPI, these seats are a litmus test. It has been leaking votes over the past few elections. In Thiruvananthapuram, for example, since polling over half of all votes in 2009, when Mr Raveendran won, the party came down to less than 30 per cent in 2019.

In Wayanad there was a big 13 per cent negative swing between 2014 and 2019.

In each case it has been the Congress and the BJP benefitting, and the latter party will hope the combination of its groundwork in the past few years and the fallout of the INDIA squabble will give it a boost to help win its first ever Lok Sabha seat from the state.

For 2024, the target of ‘abki baar, 400 paar’ will need the party to score seats in all states, even if it can count on a big chunk from its bastions in the Hindi heartland.

Kerala, and neighbouring Tamil Nadu, which has been almost as unfriendly to the party, together offer 59 Lok Sabha seats. In 2019 the BJP got only one of these. In 2014 it got zero.

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In a tough battle with sitting Congress MP Shashi Tharoor for the prized Thiruvananthapuram seat, BJP candidate and Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Sunday said the constituency has been deprived of development for the last 15-20 years.

Speaking to ANI on Sunday, the Union Minister said, “Thiruvananthapuram has been denied development and jobs for the last 15-20 years. None of the two MPs (who represented the seat all these years) did anything for the people. The people here are craving for development, change and jobs. The youth want opportunities.”

Rajeev Chandrasekhar faces a stiff challenge from former diplomat and senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, who is seeking a third term from the constituency.

The CPM-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) has fielded CPI leader Pannyan Raveendran from the constituency, who won the seat in 2005.

While the BJP has never won a Lok Sabha seat in Kerala, the party registered a victory in the Thiruvananthapuram district just once, with O Rajagopal winning the Nemam assembly seat in 2016.

In the 2019 polls, the BJP’s Kummanam Rajasekharan won 31.3 per cent votes in Thiruvananthapuram, the largest vote share achieved by the party in all 20 Lok Sabha constituencies it contested in the state.

However, with Rajeev Chandrasekhar jumping into the fray this year, the battle for Thiruvananthapuram has turned into a three-cornered one and will be one of the most-watched contests in the ongoing Lok Sabha polls.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

New Delhi:

Union IT Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Monday said Google had left itself open to possible criminal prosecution, after the global internet giant’s artificial intelligence tool – Gemini – provided an objectionable response to a question about Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “Platforms like Google are significant powers on the internet (and) for them to do something wrong and then simply say, ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘I apologise’ is certainly not what the law expects them to do,” he told NDTV this morning.

He further questioned the release of an “untested platform (referring to the Gemini chatbot)… without any disclosures or disclaimers”, and said, “… then there will be consequences. To simply then say ‘… sorry, it was untested’ is not consistent with our expectations of compliance with the law.”

“Why is there a belief amongst these big platforms that they can take something from the lab… and launch it without guardrails or protective framework. This is unconscionable and unacceptable… given not just the law but even  a sense of responsibility and discipline,” he said in an exclusive interview.

Mr Chandrasekhar emphasised the government’s “sincere (and) serious responsibility” to internet users in India, and said tech companies could not “get away by talking their way out of a problem”.

However, he stopped short of saying the government does, in fact, plan to prosecute Google.

The Union Minister cited the new IT Rules and said tech companies “should not allow their platforms to be used in a manner that outputs unlawful content or violates the law of the land”.

He did not, though, say if the government will actually take legal action.

“I think it is not so much for the government to prosecute as much as the users who have the cause of action… who are prejudiced by a platform that spews out unlawful content,” he told NDTV.

“I have heard… there are many people who are quite agitated by the conduct of this and other platforms. My response to them is, ‘the government may, or may not, do some things because we have limited powers under the law… it is for individuals, or groups, to hold them to account.”

Mr Chandrasekhar’s sharp words come amid a growing row between the government and Google after Gemini – a generative artificial intelligence chatbot earlier called Bard – after the tool’s controversial response to a question on the Prime Minister and his policies.

Gemini reportedly based its answer on factors like the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s “nationalist ideology” and what its critics say is quashing of dissent and violence against minorities.

Under-fire, Google last month conceded Gemini “may not always be reliable in responding to certain prompts related to current events and political topics”, and said it was working to address the issue.

READ | Google Pauses AI Tool Over Images Of Woman Nazi Soldiers

It isn’t just the Modi question that has the chatbot roiled in controversy. Google CEO Sundar Pichai said last week some of its text and image responses were “biased” and “completely unacceptable”.

READ | Gemini AI Gaffes “Completely Unacceptable”: Google’s Sundar Pichai

This was after Gemini, asked to show the founding fathers of the United States, generated photos of people of colour, including a man of apparent Sikh heritage, in a significant historical faux pas.

“We’re aware Gemini is offering inaccuracies in some historical image generation depictions… we are working to improve these kinds of depictions immediately,” the company said on X.

“Gemini’s AI image generation does generate a wide range of people. And that’s generally a good thing because people around the world use it. But it’s missing the mark here.”

In response to all of these concerns, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology is expected to issue a notice to Google; in earlier comments, Mr Chandrashekhar said Gemini’s responses were “direct violations of the IT Act and also of several provisions of the Criminal Code”.

Meanwhile, the MEITY, in an advisory issued last week, must have approval before launching test versions of software using generative AI, or any algorithms in the beta stage of development.

“My responsibility is to the Indian people… to make sure the internet in India is safe and trusted. We are the largest connected nation in the world with 900 million users… This has been told to Google and every other platform. Some take this advice seriously. Others believe they are above the laws…”

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Setting up a possible mouth-watering contest in a state where it had failed to win even a single seat in 2019, the BJP has fielded Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar from Kerala’s Thiruvananthapuram, a constituency held by senior Congress Leader Shashi Tharoor for three straight terms.

This will be the first Lok Sabha contest for Mr Chandrasekhar, who is the Minister of State for Information Technology and Skill Development, and is currently an MP from the Rajya Sabha.

The choice of the Union Minister for the Thiruvananthapuram seat is an indication of the BJP’s focus on the southern states, where it had failed to make a significant dent in 2019, winning only 29 of the 129 seats (130 including Puducherry). At 25, most of these came from Karnataka and the remaining from Telangana. Both of those states are now ruled by the Congress. 

In a sign of the uphill battle that Mr Chandrasekhar is likely to face, veteran BJP leader O Rajagopal had heaped praise on Mr Tharoor in January and said that it would be difficult to defeat the Congress leader in the Kerala capital as he has been able to “sway the minds of the people”. 

“That is why he has been winning again and again from Thiruvananthapuram. I doubt anyone else will get an opportunity to win from there in the near future,” he had said, before backtracking a day later. 

Having set itself a target of winning 370 seats on its own in the Lok Sabha polls – up from the 303 it had won in 2019 – the BJP is looking at the southern states to help it get to this number. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was in Tamil Nadu and Kerala for a two-day visit just this week. 

At 39, Tamil Nadu sends the fifth-highest number of MPs to the Lok Sabha, while Kerala accounts for 20. The BJP had not won even a single seat in either of the states in 2019.

In the list of 195 names released by the BJP on Saturday, 12 names were announced for Kerala.