This video shows fruit vendors being dislodged in India’s eastern state of Odisha

This article is more than one year old.
Published on February 19, 2020 at 06:45
Updated on March 2, 2020 at 12:35
2 min read
By AFP India

A video of roadside fruit stalls being forcibly destroyed has been viewed thousands of times in multiple posts on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube alongside a claim that it shows removal efforts by the state government in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state. The claim is false; the video in fact shows the dislodgement of roadside vendors in the East Indian state of Odisha.

The one minute 49-second video was published here on Facebook on February 9, 2020. It has been viewed more than 3,100 times.

Below is a screenshot of the misleading post:

The post’s Hindi-language caption translates to English as: “This is in Uttar Pradesh, where Yogi is on course to make India poverty-free.”

Yogi refers to Yogi Adityanath, the Bharatiya Janata Party chief minister of Uttar Pradesh.

The same video has also been shared on Facebook here, here and here; on Twitter here and here; and on YouTube here and here, with a similar claim.

The claim is false; the same footage was published on Twitter here by The News Insight on on January 25, 2020, which reported that the video shows street vendors being evicted at the Unit-1 Market in Bhubaneswar, the capital city of Odisha.

Visuals from the Eviction Drive near Unit-1 Market in #Bhubaneswar .@bmcbbsr @CMO_Odisha @Naveen_Odisha @dpradhanbjp @SamirMohantyBJP @NPatnaikOdisha @AprajitaSarangi #TheNewsInsight #TNI #Odisha pic.twitter.com/XxKK4333o4
— The News Insight (TNI) (@TNITweet) January 24, 2020

Below is a screenshot comparison of the footage in the misleading posts (L) and The News Insight video (R):

Another video of the eviction was also published here on the official YouTube channel of local television station Odisha TV on January 24, 2020.

At the video’s 25-second mark, the vehicle registration number of the excavator appears, which reads OD 02 G 9651. This excavator is registered in Bhubaneswar, according to the Ministry of Road, Transport & Highways’ database.

Below is a screenshot of the vehicle registration details:

The vendors' removal in Bhubaneswar was also reported by other Odisha-based media, including the Pragativadi newspaper here, Odisha Link news website here, and the Kanak News television channel here and here.

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