After the 2025 Bihar Assembly election results, opposition parties raised concerns about the Election Commission’s impartiality (here and here). Amid this, a video (here, here, here and here) went viral on social media claiming to show Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar bowing at the feet of Home Minister Amit Shah. Here’s the truth behind the video.
Claim: The video shows Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar bowing at the feet of Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
Fact: The video is a deepfake. The visuals match a 2023 event where Gyanesh Kumar, then Secretary of the Ministry of Cooperation, felicitated Amit Shah with a shawl. The livestream of the event shows no such bowing, and AI-detection tools indicate the viral clip is likely AI-generated. Hence the claim FALSE.
To verify the claim, we first conducted a keyword search on Google to check whether any credible reports mentioned such an incident involving Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar, but none were found.
We then performed a reverse image search using the first frame of the viral video, which led us to the same photograph on Hindustan Times Media’s content syndication platform, ‘Content Garden’. The photo description states that it was taken at a symposium held in Delhi on 08 November 2023, and a side-by-side comparison of the viral clip with the 2023 photograph confirms that both are from the same event.
According to the details provided on the website, the photo was taken when Gyanesh Kumar was serving as the Secretary of the Union Ministry of Cooperation. He was felicitating Union Home Minister Amit Shah with a shawl at the National Symposium on Promoting Organic Products through Cooperatives, an event organised by National Cooperative Organics Limited in New Delhi on 8 November 2023.
Further search to check whether Gyanesh Kumar made any gesture similar to what is seen in the viral video led us to the official livestream of the event, uploaded by the Ministry of Cooperation under the title “National Symposium on Promotion of Organic Products through Cooperative Sector by NCOL.” At the timestamp 01:25:10, Gyanesh Kumar is seen presenting the shawl to Amit Shah. However, he does not bow at his feet; he simply steps aside to continue with the programme.
On closely examining the viral clip, we noticed several inconsistencies. At different moments, the hands of both individuals appear blurred, partially invisible, or unnaturally distorted, especially after Gyanesh Kumar places the shawl on Amit Shah. Such distortions are common indicators of AI-generated or digitally manipulated content, suggesting the video is not genuine.
To verify whether the clip was a deepfake, we analysed it using the AI-detection tool Hive. The tool indicated that the video is likely AI-generated. Combined with the visual inconsistencies observed earlier, this confirms that the viral clip is a deepfake.
To sum up, this video claiming to show Chief Election Commissioner of India Gyanesh Kumar bowing down before Home Minister Amit Shah is a deepfake.
