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| - Fact Check: Decade-old video of Yogi Adityanath distributing money shared with claims of bribery during assembly polls
A video of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath distributing money has gone viral, with the claim that the CM is bribing voters during the ongoing assembly elections. India Today's Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found the claim to be misleading.
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India Today Fact Check
This is a 10-year-old video of Yogi Adityanath, who was an MP from Gorakhpur at the time. In this video, he was taped helping villagers who lost their crops to a fire. This has nothing to do with the ongoing elections.
With six more phases of the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls yet to take place, social media is full of supporters of various parties attempting to influence the electorate. Amid this, a video of UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath distributing money has been shared by several people.
The viral video sees the CM sitting in a chair, surrounded by people. A few people were seen touching his feet after receiving money. Those sharing the video accused the CM of bribing voters during the ongoing assembly elections.
“This is how he’s contesting. For the first time in this country’s history, we are witnessing a Chief Minister distributing money to win elections,” claimed a Twitter user. The video has also gone viral on Facebook with the same claim.
#UPElections2022 #BoycottBJP #aimim___ @asadowaisi @JamiatUlama_in @aimim_national pic.twitter.com/74ct66dUi1 — Aleem Shaikh (@AleemSh98477102) February 10, 2022
Archived version of the same claim can be found here and here.
India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) found this claim misleading. The viral video is about a decade old and has nothing to do with the ongoing assembly elections.
AFWA Probe
With the help of InVid, we sliced the video into key frames. Through reverse search of the images, we found several fact-check reports based on this video.
Results led us to a fact-check report on the same video published by The Quint on March 23, 2019. The report noted that this video initially went viral just before the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections.
India Today also fact-checked the same claim during the Lok Sabha elections. That report mentioned that this viral video was actually from 2012 and had nothing to do with the then-ongoing polls.
The original video was uploaded by a person called Vinay Kumar Gautam in 2012. He spoke to AFWA and confirmed that it was shot in April 2012. At that time, Yogi Adityanath was a Lok Sabha MP from Gorakhpur. According to Gautam, several people in and around Gorakhpur faced a huge financial crisis at the time after they lost their crops to a fire. The then-MP reached out to these villagers and helped them financially using the MP fund. However, later Goutam deleted this video from YouTube.
Thus, we conclude that the viral video of Yogi Adityanath distributing money is about a decade old and has nothing to do with the ongoing election.
(With inputs from Riddhish Dutta)
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