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| - Fact Check: This video of a man in BJP attire distributing alcohol is OLD, unrelated to Bihar bypoll
A video of a man donning a BJP cap and scarf and distributing alcohol during a rally ahead of a bypoll in Bihar is going viral on social media. However, the viral video has no link to the Kurhani bypoll.
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India Today Fact Check
The viral video is old and was shared in December 2021 with the claim that it was from Haridwar. It has nothing to do with the bypoll in Bihar.
On December 5, one Lok Sabha seat and some assembly seats in Bihar witnessed bylections, including Kurhani. Reportedly, on December 3, Lok Janshakti Party leader Chirag Paswan along with Bharatiya Janata Party MP Ravi Kishan, while campaigning in Kurhani, attacked Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.
Meanwhile, a video that’s been shared widely on social media shows a man donning a BJP cap and scarf distributing alcohol. Those sharing the video claimed it was from the aforementioned BJP and LJP rallies in Kurhani.
One such tweet said in Hindi, "BJP's full form has changed in the 93-Kurhani assembly by-election. B=Bottle, J=Jamke, P=Piyyo. Today, BJP and Chirag Ji have started the drink and vote campaign in an election rally at Kerma Maidan." The archived version of such a post can be seen here.
Satish Kumar, the Rashtriya Janata Dal MLA from Makhdumpur also shared the same video with the same claims. The archived version of his post can be seen here.
AFWA's investigation found that the viral video has no link to the Kurhani by-election and that it is old.
AFWA Probe
Under the viral tweets, we noticed that many had commented that this video clip was old. A subsequent search on Twitter with relevant keywords led to many who shared this video in 2021.
On December 20, 2021, the video was shared on the Uttar Pradesh Congress's official Twitter account. On the same day, Congress MP Imran Pratapgarhi and Youth Congress President Srinivas BV also shared the same clip. In a video, Srinivas even claimed that this incident happened in Haridwar during a JP Nadda rally.
From around the same time, we found a Dainik Bhaskar report that also said the incident was allegedly from JP Nadda's rally in Haridwar. On December 21, 2021, UP Tak also shared the same video on its official YouTube channel in the “Aaj Kya Hai Viral” segment.
However, none of the news reports we found could identify the location and the date of the incident for sure and reported only what the tweets claimed. This is not the first time this video has gone viral with false claims. Earlier this year, lawyer Prashant Bhushan and Congress leader Kirti Azad claim this was from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's July 4 rally in Telangana. At the time, AFWA had debunked this.
Thus, it is clear that the viral video is in no way related to the Kurhani by-election. It was shared on social media as early as 2021.
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