Madhya Pradesh: Officials reject Cong charge of AI images in water scheme

The Indian National Congress has accused the Madhya Pradesh government of pioneering a new model of governance: water conservation by algorithm. According to the party, the Khandwa district administration has clinched a national water conservation award by submitting AI-generated images of development works that existed more convincingly on screen than on the ground.

Khandwa district was declared first nationally for water conservation under the Centre’s 'Jal Sanchay, Jan Bhagidari' campaign, bagging a Rs 2-crore prize at the sixth National Water Awards ceremony held in New Delhi in November. Officials also said Kaveshwar panchayat in the district won second prize in the best gram panchayat category — proof, at least on paper, that Khandwa had cracked the code on harvesting every last drop.

Enter the Congress, unimpressed. State party chief Jitu Patwari alleged on X that the BJP government had not merely embraced artificial intelligence, but weaponised it.

“Where the BJP government should teach our children the proper use of AI, it is itself indulging in corruption using AI. In Khandwa, officials of the BJP government turned two-foot-deep pits into wells using AI, and uploaded AI-generated images of various development works across the area on the portal.”

On the strength of these digital marvels, Patwari claimed, officials even collected an award “from the Honourable President”.

“When the ground reality came to light, fields and empty ground were found there. Clearly, this was not water conservation, but a game of technology-created images. Under the BJP rule, corruption has also become smart,” he added.

With the charge that India’s water security had been boosted by prompt engineering rather than public works doing the rounds, the Khandwa administration convened a press conference to do damage control — and to draw a sharp distinction between real portals and allegedly imaginary ones.

District panchayat CEO Nagarjun B. Gowda insisted that AI images had “no connection whatsoever” with the National Water Award. He said “verified images after thorough scrutiny” of 1,29,046 works executed under 'Jal Sanchay, Jan Bhagidari' were uploaded on the official JSJB portal, and that the ministry of jal shakti (water resources) had verified them, including random field inspections of one per cent of the works.

“Prima facie, false news about water conservation works carried out in Khandwa district is being spread by some social media accounts,” Gowda said.

The confusion, he argued, stemmed from a different government platform altogether. Photographs — including, it turns out, some synthetic ones — were uploaded on the 'Catch the Rain' portal, which he described as being meant only for “educational and motivational purposes”.

“The district administration has found that 21 images generated through AI were uploaded on the Catch the Rain portal. This was possibly done with malicious intent. The district administration is taking action against those who uploaded these images,” he said.

And just in case anyone was still mixing up their portals, Gowda underlined the point: “The Catch the Rain portal is completely different from the 'Jal Sanchay, Jan Bhagidari' campaign portal. Awards under the 'Jal Sanchay, Jan Bhagidari' campaign are not considered based on images uploaded on the Catch the Rain portal.”

According to the administration, more than 1.25 lakh water conservation works were carried out in Khandwa under the campaign — the highest in the country — suggesting that whatever the provenance of 21 stray images, the bulk of the work was resolutely offline.

Still, the episode has handed the Opposition a ready-made punchline in an election season increasingly peppered with talk of AI, governance and accountability. For now, the government says the wells are real, the checks were done and the award stands. The Congress, meanwhile, insists that in Khandwa, at least some of the water flowed first through a graphics card.

With PTI inputs