First, there was the BJP’s ‘Rafale for Dummies’ video with Pallavi Joshi. Now, the Congress jumps in

A day after the BJP released a video of actor Pallavi Joshi explaining the contentious Rafale deal “for dummies”, the Congress hit back by posting its own version mocking the party’s narrative of the Rs 59,000 crore defence deal.

Congress’s video, which it called the “real” explanation, followed a very similar format to that of the BJP’s, which shows Joshi using the metaphor of a housing society signing on a French company to replace the building’s security system to explain the deal. The BJP’s video slammed the opposition’s claims that the government was trying to hide details of payments made during the deal, which Congress President Rahul Gandhi has called the “biggest ever” corruption scandal.

The Congress, meanwhile, asserted that the “well-thought out” deal made during its rule was altered for the worse by the Modi government. In its video, the Congress mimicked the setting and style of the video released by the BJP, complete with a woman delivering a monologue about security for a housing society while sitting on a chair, a cup of coffee in her hand. The problem arose, she says, when the “chowkidar” of the society jumped in claiming that he would handle the deal, which he eventually made for three times the amount negotiated by her. The Congress took several potshots at the Prime Minister through the video and wrote while posting it on Twitter that “mitrogen” (a snide reference to a part of Modi’s speech at IIT-Bombay in which he talked about generating gas from sewage) was getting to the party’s head.

The format of these videos is, however, not original to the BJP either. One Twitter user pointed out the similarity of the style to a Scottish advertisement in which a woman explained the Sottish referendum with a cup of coffee in her hand.

While it’s unlikely that this is the last we’ll hear or see of the battle between the two political parties over the deal, Twitter users are making their own versions of the video by dubbing audio over the footage, such as this one below which pokes fun at infamous claims about Prime Minister Modi’s 56-inch chest.