Crowd and chaos at AI Summit: Delegates stood in queues for hours, some had their belongings even stolen; Congress said – country’s image ruined due to Modi’s ‘reel’

By Samira Vishwas On Feb 17, 2026

The Central Government has apologized for the massive disturbances that occurred on the first day of the ongoing ‘India AI Impact Summit 2026’ at Bharat Mandapam in Delhi. Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnav said on February 17 that the crowd gathered on the first day of the summit was much larger than expected, due to which people faced problems. We apologize for the inconvenience caused to people. Thousands of startup founders, tech experts and foreign delegates had arrived on Monday, the first day of the summit. Due to huge crowd and tight security, long queues were formed at the entry points. Representatives and delegates of global tech companies had to wait for hours.

Founder claims- wearables stolen amid security cordon

Many exhibitors complained that they were thrown out of their own stalls in the name of security check before the arrival of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Dhananjay Yadav, CEO of startup ‘Neo Sapien’, alleged that his precious AI wearables went missing when he was sent out of the stall for security check.

Questions were also raised on connectivity and poor communication.

Riskil founder Puneet Jain and entrepreneur Priyanshu Ratnakar raised questions on the management. He said the experience was spoiled by patchy Wi-Fi, mobile network issues and frequent registration issues. The founders said that due to the VIP movement, those people who are creating the AI future of the country were kept standing outside for hours.

More than 70 thousand people arrived, situation worsened due to huge crowd

While holding a press conference on the second day of the summit, Ashwini Vaishnav said that this is the world’s largest AI summit. More than 70 thousand people have reached the program on the first day of the event itself. Now the arrangements are fine, but if anyone faces any problem tomorrow, we apologize for that. He said that the government is open to suggestions and to improve the experience, a ‘war room’ has been created which is working round the clock. The ‘war room’ is a control center from where real-time monitoring of the entire venue is done.

Congress said – country’s image ruined due to Modi’s ‘reel’

Congress has made a post on the chaos in the summit. It was written in it – AI summit is being held in Delhi, but the situation there is very terrible. Founders and exhibitors are extremely upset with the mis-management at the summit. He says that for the arrival of PM Modi, the main hall was vacated and the exhibitors were thrown out of their own paid stalls.

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