Old video of Indian politician being insulted falsely linked to upcoming state polls

Published on November 6, 2025 at 03:12
2 min read
By Akshita KUMARI, AFP India

As Indian opposition parties mount a challenge against Bihar state's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-Janata Dal (United) alliance in elections kicking off on November 6, social media users falsely claimed BJP candidates were being insulted with shoe garlands on the campaign trail. However, they share a video showing an incident that took place in the central state of Madhya Pradesh in 2018.

"BJP candidates are being welcomed with garlands of shoes and slippers everywhere in Bihar. BJP folks, Bihar's slipped out of your hands," reads the Hindi-language Facebook post shared on October 21, 2025.

The seven-second clip shows a man quickly removing a garland of shoes -- a way of showing disrespect or public anger -- and lunging at the person who put it over his head.

Hindi-language text overlaid on the video, which was viewed more than 72,000 times, reads: "BJP candidate in Bihar. Welcomed with a garland of shoes."

The post goes on to predict the November 6 election will be won by the opposition coalition led by the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Congress party, which seeks to unseat the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in India's third-most populous state (archived link).

Screenshot of the false post captured on November 4, 2025, with a red X added by AFP

Hindu-majority Bihar is a bellwether battleground -- it remains the only state in the Hindi-speaking north where Modi's Hindu nationalist BJP has never ruled alone (archived link).

The video of the man being given the shoe garland also surfaced alongside similar claims on Facebook, Instagram, Threads and X, with comments indicating users believed that the incident happened ahead of the upcoming Bihar polls.

One user wrote: "It is not the public that is beating up BJP leaders, it is Modi's dictatorial policies that are being beaten up."

"The public has woken up, brother," another commented.

However, the video is from 2018 and was taken in a different state.

A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the circulating video led to an X post by Indian news Agency ANI on November 20, 2018 sharing the clip, which has been mirrored in the false posts (archived link).

The post states the video shows a man greeting a BJP lawmaker and election candidate Dilip Singh Shekhawat with a garland of shoes in the central Madhya Pradesh state on November 19, 2018.

Screenshot comparison of the video shared in the false post (L) and the clip on X by ANI, with the red X added by AFP

The same video was also published in reports by Indian news channels Live Hindustan and ABP Asmita in November 2018 (archived here and here).

Further keyword searches found a report by The Times of India, which said the incident took place in Khedavada village in Madhya Pradesh as Shekhawat was campaigning for the state assembly elections in 2018 (archived link).

He was later defeated in the elections that year by Congress party's Dilip Singh Gurjar (archived link).

AFP has previously debunked misinformation related to the Bihar elections here and here.

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