No, this video does not show supporters of Rahul Gandhi crying after his election defeat

This article is more than one year old.
Published on June 6, 2019 at 08:15
2 min read
By AFP India

A video has been viewed tens of thousands of times in multiple Facebook posts which claim it shows supporters of Indian opposition politician Rahul Gandhi crying as they met him after his defeat in the Indian elections. The claim is false; the video has circulated online since November 2017 in reports about Gandhi meeting the families of victims of a power plant explosion.

The video was published in this Facebook post on May 28, 2019.

It has been viewed more than 43,000 times and shared more than 1,100 times after being posted by a page with more than 54,000 followers.

Below is a screenshot of the misleading post:

A screenshot of the misleading Facebook post

The Hindi-language caption translates to English as: “When Rahul Gandhi met the people from Amethi who came to Delhi, then people after seeing him got emotional and started crying. He lost Amethi to the ideology of lies & deceit not love love & affinity of the people.”

Rahul Gandhi is the leader of India’s main opposition party, the Indian National Congress (INC).

Amethi is a town in North India. Gandhi lost the seat for Amethi in the Indian elections. The official results were announced on May 23, 2019 by the Election Commission of India here.

Below is a screenshot of the results:

The results for the constituency of Amethi published by the Election Commission of India

Gandhi’s defeat to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s Smriti Irani on May 23, 2019 was reported by The Hindustan Times here on May 24, 2019.

The video was also shared in Facebook posts here, here and here, with a similar claim.

The claim is false; the video has circulated online since November 2017 in reports about Gandhi meeting the families of victims of a power plant explosion.

A reverse image search on Google found this identical clip posted on the official Congress Twitter account on November 2, 2017.

The same video was shared here on November 2, 2017 on Rahul Gandhi’s official YouTube channel.

The caption states: “Congress VP Rahul Gandhi at the NTPC headquarters, meeting with the affected and their families.”

Below is a screenshot comparison of the video in the misleading posts (L) and the YouTube video (R):

A screenshot comparison of the video in the misleading posts (L) and the YouTube video (R)

This article published by Indian news site NDTV on November 2, 2017, states Gandhi met the families of the victims of an explosion at the Unchahar NTPC plant in the city of Raebareli in Uttar Pradesh state.

This report published by Reuters on July 23, 2018, states that an internal review found 45 workers died as a result of the disaster.

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