This Video of Anurag Thakur Announcing Payment of Pending DA Arrears Is Altered

Union Minister Thakur's video has been altered. The original one is from 2019, when he took oath as a Lok Sabha MP.

A video of Union Minister Anurag Thakur is being shared to claim that 18 months of pending Dearness Allowance (DA) arrears will be paid to central government employees, along with pension of January.

Those sharing the video have said, "18 months DA arrears pending during Covid time @3% will be paid along with January pension."

(More archives of similar claims can be found here and here.)

What is the truth?: The video of Thakur has been altered and is being used to make the fake claim.

• The original video dated back to 2019 and showed him taking oath as Lok Sabha MP.

• The Central government in March 2023, had announced that it would not release DA that had been withheld during the pandemic as it was not considered "feasible."

Where is the video from?: A simple reverse image search on the keyframes of the video directed us to a similar-looking clip uploaded on the official YouTube channel of 'Sansad TV'.

• The video was shared on 17 June 2019 and was titled, "Anurag Singh Thakur takes oath as Lok Sabha MP."

• We could not find the source of the audio as heard in the viral video.

News reports on DA arrears: A keyword search led us to a report published in The Economic Times which said that the government will not be paying 18 months' worth of DA to central government employees.

• It mentioned that the government stopped the DA arrears during the COVID-19 pandemic.

• The report further mentioned that the decision was justified in the Lok Sabha.

Government's response in Lok Sabha: When asked if the government is going to release the 18 months DA arrears that was stopped during the pandemic, Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary said that the government has decided not to release the same.

• Chaudhary answered the question on 13 March 2023 in Lok Sabha.

• Justifying the decision, he said, "As the adverse financial impact of pandemic in 2020 and the financing of welfare measures taken by Government had a fiscal spill over beyond FY 2020-21, arrears of DA/DR which mostly pertain to the difficult FY of 2020-21 are not considered feasible."

• Chaudhary further mentioned that an amount of Rs 34,402.32 crores was saved and utilised to tide over the economic impact of the pandemic.

Conclusion: It is clear that an altered video of Union Minister Anurag Thakur is being shared to claim that the pending 18 months of DA arrears will be soon paid to central government employees.

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