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| - Fact Check: This is NOT Siddaramaiah dancing! Video of 'lookalike' goes viral
India Today's investigation found that the man in the video is Channamahagowda, a farmer from Mysuru — not Siddaramaiah.
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India Today Fact Check
The man dancing in the video is Channamahagowda, a lookalike of Siddaramaiah.
Karnataka's Chief Minister-Designate Siddaramaiah's skill in folk dance is well-documented. Every year, the Congress leader reportedly visits his native village in Mysuru and dances alongside other participants in a festival there.
Following the Congress party's victory in the Karnataka Assembly polls, a video allegedly showing Siddaramaiah dancing has gone viral on social media. The 38-second-long video shows a man who closely resembles Siddaramaiah dancing to the tune of a popular Kannada song. A group of people can be seen sitting around him, some clapping their hands and others recording the dance.
India Today's investigation found that the man in the video is Channamahagowda, a farmer from Mysuru — not Siddaramaiah.
Our Investigation
Through a keyword search, we discovered the same video went viral on social media in 2018. Even then, those sharing it claimed it was Siddaramaiah dancing.
Subsequent searches led us to a March 2018 report by the Bangalore Mirror, which identified the man in the video as Channamayigowda, a 55-year-old farmer from Karnataka's Mysuru. At the time, he told reporters, “I was told to perform a dance, which I did. This video had no intent to bring a bad name to the CM.” Incidentally, Siddaramaiah was the chief minister of Karnataka then.
According to an Asianet Newsable article from around the same time, Channamayigowda had contested against Siddaramaiah in the 2013 Karnataka Assembly elections and later joined the Congress party.
We also found a video interview of Channamayigowda on the YouTube channel of Asianet Suvarna News, dated March 1, 2018. In the interview, he mentioned that he had danced as part of a cultural program held during a cultural programme organised as part of an agricultural workshop at Kaggalipura in Mysuru. The viral video showed that.
Several news reports about the man have referred to him as Siddaramaiah’s lookalike. So, it is more than evident that the CM-Designate was not the one dancing in the viral video.
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