Old Rally Clip From Kerala Shared as Recent With False Communal Claims

The flag is of the Indian Union Muslim League and not Pakistan.

Fact-Check: This video is from 2019 and does not show Pakistan's flag. 

(Source: The Quint) 

A video of Congress's rally in Kerala showing K Muraleedharan is being shared to claim that Pakistan's flag was raised at the event.

Who shared it?: This video was shared by the Bharatiya Janata Party Telangana State Treasurer Shanthikumar. An archive of the post can be found here.

An archive of the post can be found here. 

(X/Screenshot) 

This post recorded 38.4K views at the time of writing this story. (Archives of similar claims can be found here, here and here.)

Is this true?: Firstly, the video is from 2019 and shows Congress' K Muraleedharan in a rally in Kerala.

• The flag in question is that of the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) which was in alliance with the Congress, forming the United Democratic Front (UDF), in Kerala during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

How did we find out?: At first, we divided the video into multiple keyframes and ran a Google reverse image search on some of them.

• We came across the same video on two Facebook pages from 2019. Two pages, namely Kondotti Pachapada and MK Sawad, uploaded this video on their pages.

Here is a close-up of the dates. 

(The Quint) 

• The captions were written in Malayalam and loosely translates to that the Left Democratic Front's candidate from Vadakara constituency, P Jayarajan would go to jail and Murleedharan (Congress candidate) would serve in the parliament.

• It addressed Jayarajan as 'Kolarajan' which means a killer or murderer.

FLAG: We closely examined the flags in the rally and realised that it is different than the flag of Pakistan, as claimed.

• Below is a comparison between Pakistan's flag and the flags in the viral clip.

• The white strip in Pakistan's flag is missing in the ones in the viral video.

Here is a comparison between the two. 

(The Quint) 

• Upon looking closer, we tried comparing the flag of the IUML with the one in the viral video and found similarities.

• The star and moon can be seen in both the flags in the same place.

Here is a comparison between the two. 

(The Quint) 

• The Congress party was in alliance with the IUML as a part of the UDF from Kerala during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

Congress and IUML in Lok Sabha 2024: Both parties have finalised the seat-sharing discussion for the upcoming General elections.

• While the Congress will contest from 16 out of 20 Lok Sabha seats in Kerala, the IUML will contest from Mallappuram and Ponnani, as reported by India Today.

• Additionally, the IUML requested an extra seat, and the Congress provided them with one seat in the Rajya Sabha.

  
  

Conclusion: Clearly, the viral video is being falsely shared as recent with the claim that Pakistan's flag was raised in Murleedharan's rally.

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