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| - A video is going viral online showing Bollywood actor Pankaj Tripathi campaigning against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in an advertisement.
In the video, Tripathi plays the role of a peanut vendor and says, “I sell peanuts, not my intelligence. Take a look at this message from the BJP. It says, ‘Vote for us, we’ll bring development.’ Do you think I’m clueless? I vote for them, and government funds just vanish. I may be a peanut seller, but I’m no fool. If the BJP tries to lure you, remember to say, ‘I’m not a fool."
This was shared by several social media users along with official accounts of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Rajasthan and Seelampur.
How did we find out the truth?: We performed a keyword search to look for reports about Tripathi being a part of such an ad but found none.
Then we performed a reverse image search on some of the keyframes of the viral video and this led us to the original video shared by Tripathi and 'UPI Chalega'.
In this video, Tripathi talks about UPI fraud and mentions nothing about the BJP.
He says, "I sell peanuts, not my intelligence. Look at this message, it says 'you have won a lottery. Click on the link, enter UPI PIN and win money! Don't I know? Here I will put my UPI PIN and there my money will get deducted'. I am peanut seller, not a fool."
We also noticed that the phone screen reads “Winner. Congrats! You have won a lottery of Rs 25,00,000! To claim your prize, click here,” followed by a hyperlink. In the viral video, this has been replaced with the BJP’s symbol and the text: “Vote for BJP”.
The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) announced its collaboration with Tripathi and made him the “UPI Safety Ambassador” in November 2023.
In September this year, the UPI shared several ad campaigns called “Main Moorkh Nahi Hoon”, featuring Tripathi to raise awareness about scams related to digital payment services.
Conclusion: An edited video of Pankaj Tripathi is going viral to claim that he is campaigning in an ad against the BJP.
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