Bharatiya Janata Party MP from Barabanki opts out of Lok Sabha polls after ‘obscene’ video surfaces

Bharatiya Janata Party leader Upendra Singh Rawat, who was announced as the party’s candidate for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections from Uttar Pradesh’s Barabanki constituency, said on Monday that he will not contest the general elections, the Hindustan Times reported.

The announcement came after a video, allegedly showing a naked Rawat in bed with a woman, came to be widely circulated on social media. Rawat said that the video is a deepfake, made using Artificial Intelligence.

A first information report as been registered at a police station in Kotwali, Barabanki, based on a complaint by Rawat’s personal secretary, who claimed that the “obscene” and “objectionable” video was faked to damage the reputation of the BJP leader.

Rawat currently represents Barabanki in the Lok Sabha.

“I have requested the Honorable National President [of the BJP] to get [the video] investigated,” Rawat said in a post on social media, written in Hindi. “I will not contest any election in public life until I am proven innocent.”

Rawat also questioned the timing of the video’s emergence. The BJP on Saturday released its first list of 195 candidates for the Lok Sabha elections, of which 51 are from Uttar Pradesh.

On Sunday, Bhojpuri singer Pawan Singh, who was announced as the BJP’s candidate from West Bengal’s Asansol constituency, also bowed out of the upcoming general elections after leaders of West Bengal’s ruling Trinamool Congress party criticised his songs and music videos for being derogatory towards women in the state.

While Singh, who hails from Arrah in Bihar’s Bhojpur district, did not elaborate on the reason in question, Trinamool Congress’ Lok Sabha MP Abhishek Banerjee on Sunday attributed Singh’s decision to withdraw from the parliamentary election as a result of the “indomitable spirit and power of the people of West Bengal”.

Another Trinamool Congress MP Saket Gokhale described the BJP’s decision to field Singh from Asansol as “sickening and reprehensible”.