The audio in this video has been doctored to include chants supporting an Indian opposition politician
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on September 25, 2020 at 10:45
- 2 min read
- By AFP India
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The 12-second video was shared here on Facebook on September 20, 2020.
The post’s Hindi-language caption translates to English as: “The result of the Madhya Pradesh by-polls is already declared. When Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan asked in Mandsaur district’s Suwasra ‘Who’s the better CM Shivraj Chouhan or Kamal Nath’, the public responded in one voice, Kamal Nath. With whom the public stands, his name is Kamal Nath.”
Shivraj Singh Chouhan, popularly known as Shivraj, is the chief minister of the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. He represents the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Suwasra is a state assembly constituency in Mandsaur district of Madhya Pradesh. A by-election is set to be held there after former elected representative Hardeep Singh Dang quit the Indian National Congress party to join the BJP.
Kamal Nath is a Congress party politician and former chief minister of Madhya Pradesh.
The video was also shared alongside an identical claim here, here, here and here on Facebook; and here, here, here and here on Twitter.
The video was also tweeted by the Congress party’s Madhya Pradesh unit here alongside a similar claim.
The claim, however, is false.
An online keyword search found an hour-long video of Shivraj’s full speech at the rally published here on his YouTube channel on September 20, 2020.
The local representative for the Suwasra state assembly constituency and now BJP candidate Hardeep Singh can be seen in a blue turban with Shivraj in the video.
The edited clip shared in the misleading posts starts at the 59-minute 10-second mark of the original video. The chief minister can be heard asking in Hindi: “Who is better chief minister, Kamal Nath or Shivraj Singh Chouhan?” In response, the crowd can be heard shouting “Shivraj” -- not “Kamal Nath” as heard in the misleading posts.
Madhya Pradesh Home Minister Narottam Mishra pointed out that the video had been edited in this tweet.
“Rather than going to the public to swing the public mood in their favour, Congress is playing dirty politics by making a fake video viral. However, people in the state are very wise. They very well know the difference between a fake and an original,” reads the Hindi tweet.
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