A video of Narendra Modi’s speech at WEF event halted abruptly after an issue with the teleprompter has gone viral.
During Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech to the World Economic Forum on Monday via video-conferencing, he halted abruptly, glanced sideways in response to a voice, gestured with his hands, adjusted his earpiece, and proceeded to ask Klaus Schwab, Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, if he could be heard clearly.
After Schwab assured him he could, Modi enquired whether the interpreter’s voice was audible to everyone. The broadcast had to be stopped for a few minutes before the Indian Prime Minister resumed his address from the beginning.
This year the event is being held virtually and not physically in Davos.
On social media, the initial reaction promptly concluded there was a glitch in the teleprompter, and that Modi was floundering without it.
The hashtag #TeleprompterPM started trending on Twitter, with more than 60,000 tweets having been posted with the hashtag by noon on Tuesday.
Several on Twitter, including Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, made associations between a possible teleprompter failure and the prime minister’s purported inability to continue speaking.