The Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, has in response to an RTI plea from a faculty member purportedly said it has no records about any study on the impact of Mann Ki Baat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s monthly radio broadcast.

A post on Prime Minister Modi’s official X handle on Friday, and an article on narendramodi.in — the official website of the Prime Minister — mentioned such a study by the IIMB and the State Bank of India.

“Today, as #MannKiBaat completes 9 years, here is an interesting study by @TheOfficialSBI and @iimb_official which highlights some of the themes covered and their societal impact,” the October 3 post on X said.

“It is amazing how we have celebrated several life journeys and collective efforts through this medium.”

The post shared a hyperlink to an article published on narendramodi.in titled “Transformational Impact of Mann Ki Baat: An Analysis by SBI and IIM Bengaluru”.

“A research work by SBI and IIM-Bengaluru has analyzed the impact of 105 episodes of PM Modi’s Mann Ki Baat in last 9 years,” the article said.

“This collaborative research has assessed the lasting impact of changes (both tangible and intangible) brought in by the powerful and strategic medium of communication that is Mann Ki Baat. This report has also focused on analyzing the policy implication of Mann Ki Baat using the Natural Language Processing (NLP).”

The RTI plea was filed by Deepak Malghan, a professor at IIMB.

After receiving the reply from the institute, Malghan wrote on his X page: “An RTI response from IIM Bangalore suggests that it is unaware of such a study being commissioned by the institute.”

He posted a purported image of the RTI document showing his nine questions and the institute’s replies.

The questions seek to know more about the purported study, the date it started, the money spent on it, the source of its funding, whether it had the IIMB’s authorisation, whether it was by an individual faculty member or a student, among other issues.

The answers simply say “No information on record”, or “Not applicable”, or “No”.

The last question is: “Does the statement made by the Honble Prime Minister as referenced in the Preamble accurately reflect the IIMB position on the study? If it does not, has IIMB initiated any action to correct the misrepresentation?”

(“Preamble” refers to Malghan’s introductory comments in the RTI plea, where he says his queries are related to a reference made on the Prime Minister’s website.)

The IIMB’s answer: “No information on record.”