Lok Sabha Chief of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi escalated his assault on the central authorities’s E20 gasoline coverage on Friday, posting a 53-second video on social media platform X. Saying a large motion towards the rollout of 20% ethanol-blended petrol, Gandhi accused the coverage of being a automobile for corruption and a direct assault on shoppers. Nonetheless, the dramatic video featured an ironic twist that shortly caught the web’s consideration.
E20 – दाल में काला नहीं, पूरी दाल ही काली है। pic.twitter.com/Unw7UfNt9k
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) August 7, 2026
“Puri Daal Hello Kaali Hai”
Within the video, Gandhi is seen standing subsequent to a contemporary SUV. To stress his level, he dramatically opens the automobile’s gasoline tank lid, seems inside, and turns to the digital camera, twisting a well-liked Hindi idiom to claim his claims.
“The E20 situation is a really large situation,” Gandhi mentioned. “Usually we are saying daal mein kuch kaala hai (there’s something fishy), however right here puri daal hello kaali hai (the entire thing is fishy)”. He went on to state that the widespread rollout of E20 gasoline is actively harming residents’ property.
“That is destroying folks’s vehicles, destroying folks’s scooters, destroying folks’s lives, and actually, is stealing immediately from them,” Gandhi asserted, promising that the Congress occasion would take the problem up in a “huge method”.
Addressing why the opposition hasn’t tackled this situation sooner, he cited the sheer quantity of alleged authorities missteps. “This can be a matter of sequencing,” he defined. “In any marketing campaign, now we have to determine the sequence of affairs. Our drawback proper now could be that there’s a lot corruption that there’s a large record of points that now we have to sequence”.
The E20 compliant catch
Regardless of the fiery rhetoric towards E20 gasoline, there was a obtrusive contradiction within the video. When Gandhi opened the gasoline lid to ship his criticism, the gasoline tank cap itself clearly indicated that the automobile was, actually, an ‘E20’ compliant automotive. This element undercut the dramatic premise of the video, as Gandhi was utilizing a automobile particularly engineered to run on the 20% ethanol-blended gasoline to display how the exact same gasoline is supposedly “destroying” vehicles.
The irony of ranting towards E20 whereas counting on an E20-ready automobile is yet one more gaffe within the storied record of faux pas that has come to outline Rahul Gandhi’s on-line persona.
The E20 context
The central authorities’s push for E20 gasoline, petrol blended with 20% ethanol, is primarily aimed toward lowering India’s heavy reliance on crude oil imports and reducing down on vehicular emissions. Nonetheless, the accelerated rollout has confronted pushback from numerous quarters.
Critics have raised issues relating to decrease mileage, the potential lack of compatibility with older automobile engines, and the restricted decisions left for shoppers at gasoline pumps. Gandhi’s newest video aligns with latest opposition actions, together with a protest march led by Aam Aadmi Social gathering (AAP) chief Arvind Kejriwal earlier this week on the identical E20 situation. Because the Congress prepares to raise this to a “huge” marketing campaign, it stays to be seen how they’ll handle the ironic slip-up that accompanied their opening salvo.
