An edited video of Union Home Minister Amit Shah has gone viral with a claim that a reporter's question left him speechless.
In the viral clip, a reporter can be seen asking Shah a question about the lack of funds from the Centre during natural disasters (in Telangana). The clip ends here.
Shah and other party leaders were in Telangana recently where they attended the Bharatiya Janata Party's national executive meet in Hyderabad on Sunday, 3 July.
However, we found that video was a clipped one. The interaction took place in November 2020, and is available on the channel's YouTube channel and Shah did answer questions asked by the reporter.
CLAIM
The claim was shared by Samajwadi Party's digital media coordinator Manish Jagan Agrawal who wrote, "पत्रकार ने अमित शाह जी से पूछा| इधर बारिश आई , बाढ़ आई ,लेकिन सेंट्रल से एक भी पैसे की मदद नहीं आई, क्या सूरत दिखाने दिल्ली से नेता इधर आए ? अमित शाह जी - एकदम चुप".
[Translation: Journalist asked Amit Shah, "Here it rained, floods came, but not a single penny came from Centre. Why did leaders from Delhi come here to show their face? Amit Shah - absolutely silent"]
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
Using InVID WeVerify Google Chrome extension, we extracted keyframes from the viral video and conducted a reverse image search on some of the keyframes.
We also used keywords like "Amit Shah" and "V6 News," as the microphone held by the reporter read "V6 News."
While going through the results, we found the video on the channel's official YouTube channel, posted on 29 November 2020.
The channel was live for close to eight hours covering Shah's rally in Hyderabad and the interaction could be seen at around four hours 15 minutes.
A smaller clip of their interaction on the issue of floods was also uploaded on their YouTube channel and can be seen here:
During the interaction, the reporter asked Shah, "We have had rains and floods here but we didn't get a single penny from the Centre, now why have the leaders come here to show their face – KCR claimed, what do you have to say?"
Responding to the reporter's question, Shah said, "We have given the most amount of money to Hyderabad and I will be mentioning this in my press conference later today. But I want to say that homes of seven lakh people were flooded. Where were Owaisi and KCR? They didn't go to anyone's house nor were they seen anywhere. People had water in their home and our supporters, MLAs, and MPs went to help people".
"And why was there waterlogging? The waterlogging was caused due to encroachment that has been encouraged by Owaisi. We want to assure the people of Hyderabad that if the municipal corporation comes under the BJP, all the encroachment will be removed and we will ensure that there will be no waterlogging and make Hyderabad a modern city and hub for the IT industry, " he added.
While Shah and other senior BJP leaders were recently in Hyderabad to attend the party's national executive meet, the video is not from his recent visit. Shah also addressed a gathering during the event.
Evidently, an edited video of Amit Shah was shared to make a false claim about him not being able to answer a reporter's question.
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