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| - Fact Check: Pakistan flags were not waved at Ashok Gehlot's rally
Amid the political crisis in Rajasthan, a 10-second video of chief minister Ashok Gehlot at a congregation has gone viral with the claim that Pakistan flags were waved at his rally.
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India Today Fact Check
The flags seen in the video are not of Pakistan but religious flags associated with Islam.
Amid the political crisis in Rajasthan, a 10-second video of chief minister Ashok Gehlot at a congregation has gone viral with the claim that Pakistan flags were waved at his rally.
The video, taken from behind, shows Gehlot standing with some people on a stage and waving a plain green flag in front of a crowd in a stadium. Several green flags, some with a star and crescent, along with Tricolours, can also be seen among the crowd.
India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found the claim along with the video to be false. The green flags seen in the video are not of Pakistan but religious flags associated with Islam.
A Facebook user posted this video on July 19 with a caption in Hindi that translates to, “How much more proof should I give of treachery? How can we expect patriotism from a person in whose rally Pakistan flags are being waved?”
The archived version of the post can be seen here. The video with the false claim is being shared widely on Facebook.
AFWA investigation
Our investigation revealed that the viral video is almost two years old and was shot during the Rajasthan assembly elections of 2018. On November 21 that year, Gehlot had himself tweeted the video, wherein he was flagging off a religious procession on the occasion of Milad-un-Nabi. Jodhpur is also the constituency of Gehlot.
#Jodhpur #EidMiladUnNabi pic.twitter.com/16Pfpf0JGh— Ashok Gehlot (@ashokgehlot51) November 21, 2018
A closer look at the video reveals that the green flags which many social media users have confused with the Pakistan flag are actually Muslim religious flags.
It should be noted that Pakistan’s national flag has a white band on the left and a star and crescent in the middle facing towards the right. But the flags seen in the video have only a star and crescent.
The video, with a similar misleading claim, also went viral during the 2018 state elections. At that time too, AFWA had debunked the false claim.
Lokesh Sharma, head of Gehlot’s social media team, had then confirmed to us that the flags seen in the congregation are not of Pakistan but Muslim religious flags. He had also said that similar flags are often seen in local religious ceremonies and the video was shot in Maharaja Umed Singh Stadium in Jodhpur.
Therefore, it is confirmed that in light of the present political crisis in Rajasthan, this old video of Gehlot has resurfaced on social media with the false claim that Pakistan flags were waved at his rally. They were actually Muslim religious flags.
Rajasthan political crisis
It’s been more than two weeks that former deputy CM Sachin Pilot flew down to Delhi along with some loyalist MLAs after a longstanding dispute with Gehlot. Pilot has claimed that the Gehlot government is in minority, while the latter has accused him of trying to destabilise the government along with the BJP.
Things came to such a pass that Pilot was removed from the posts of deputy CM as well as state Congress president. Gehlot, who claims to enjoy the support of majority of MLAs and wants an assembly session to be convened, has also sought Pilot’s disqualification. At present, the matter is in court.
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