National president of the Youth Congress Srinivas BV – along with other Congress-linked accounts – shared a short video byte of Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) MP and candidate from Azamgarh, Dinesh Lal Yadav 'Nirahua'.
What did Yadav say?: In the clip, Yadav spoke in Hindi, where he said, "Modiji has stopped it, you tell me, does he have even a single child? Tell me, does Yogiji have a child? So Modiji and Yogiji have stopped unemployment by saying that they will not do it (have children), so who is increasing unemployment?"
Connecting childbirth and unemployment, he added,"The people who say that unemployment is rising in this country, tell them that the number of jobs is what it is. Now after this, if you increase the population, unemployment will go up. Modiji is trying to limit this problem, the government is, too."
He then questions why people who are unemployed are "bringing more unemployed people in the world" when they can barely fill their own stomachs. "If you say you are unemployed, have you questioned why you're giving birth to eight more unemployed people?"
Responding to this post, BJP IT Cell in-charge Amit Malviya – who has previously been caught peddling disinformation – called the video "fake." Dubbing it a "deepfake", Malviya accused the Congress of misleading people, sowing divisions in the country, and creating unrest.
"Dinesh Lal Yadav, BJP MP from Azamgarh, is filing FIR against IYC President, who is a habitual offender," Malviya added, stating that they had "all screenshots (with time stamp) and video recordings for a legal case."
Yadav too, took to hi official X account to counter Srinivas BV, saying that the full video shows "something else."
"Editing the video to serve your purpose shows the politics of appeasement and the desperation of the thug alliance," he said.
Real or a deepfake?: We downloaded the video shared by Srinivas BV and ran it through True Media, a tool for journalists to help detect deepfakes.
It said that there was "little evidence" of the video being a deepfake, and no evidence to support that Yadav's face had been manipulated in the video.
A search for the source: We used Hindi keywords such as "दिनेश लाल यादव निरहुआ योगी मोदी बच्चे" to look for a longer version of Yadav's interview on YouTube.
This led us to a nearly 12 minutes long video on a channel called 'Soul Up Hindi', which had published the video on 13 April.
It's thumbnail carried the statement from the viral video, about Yogi Adityanath and Prime Minister Narendra Modi not having children and unemployment.
In the video, the reporter mentions that Yadav was in Azamgarh, campaigning, and approaches his vehicle for the interview.
Around eight-and-a-half minutes into the video, the reporter asks Yadav about educated youth being unemployed, and if the BJP will set up government jobs for them.
Yadav responds, "First, you tell me, where in India are there any government jobs? You're asking for government jobs, right? Brother, you tell me, the point that you're raising, you don't have any information about it."
He prods to reporter for figures on available government jobs, before saying that India has a total of 80 lakh government jobs, "and you think that giving people those 80 lakh jobs to people will provide employment to everyone."
Yadav elaborates, "Employment involves jobs that PM Modi is giving people." Listing different government employment schemes, he said that those who are educated get those jobs and receive money from the government before going on to tell the reporter to "leave these useless questions aside."
At the 11-minute mark, we came across the part of this video that was used in the claim.
We saw that the video was the same as the clip shared by Srinivas BV, and did not appear to be tampered with, and did not have any cuts or alterations.
The Quint reached out to the journalist Santosh Kushwaha, who published the video on his YouTube channel.
He confirmed to us that the viral clip was not fake and added that he shot the video in Sathiyaon, Azamgarh, at around 3 PM on 13 April.
Conclusion: The viral video of BJP MP Dinesh Lal Yadav 'Nirahua' talking about unemployment and the number of children that Yogi Adityanath and PM Modi have is real, not a deepfake.
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