A video of several people holding the flags of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is being shared on social media platforms. The audio carried casteist sloganeering denouncing members of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe communities.
What have the users said?: Those sharing wrote that the video showed the "real face of BJP." It further said that they wanted to bring back the 'Manusmriti by changing the constitution."
This post recorded 4,132 views at the time of writing this story. (Archives of similar claims can be found here and here.)
We received a query about this on our WhatsApp tipline as well.
Is this true?: The video and audio have been taken from two separate instances and have been merged to create an edited video.
The audio is from 2019, taken during the nomination procession for Janata Dal (United)'s candidate from Siwan, Kavita Singh.
The Quint was unable to verify the origin of the video.
How did we find out?: At first, we ran a keyword search using the words used in the casteist slogan.
We came across a video on YouTube on one National India News channel.
The audio in the video matched with the one in the viral video.
It was uploaded on 22 April 2019 with the title, "BJP people are openly raising slogans like SC/ST Murdabad, reservation hi hi/BJP"
Similarly, we came across another video on Facebook by a page called Public TV Bihar, uploaded in 2019. It also had the same audio as the viral video.
The description read, "Slogans like SC/ST Murdabad are being raised openly in the nomination procession of BJP supported Nitish Kumar's JDU candidate from Siwan, Kavita Singh."
It also warned people to be careful of these anti-constitutional, anti-democracy, anti-reservation, anti-Dalit forces.
This incident is from the 2019 Lok Sabha elections in which the JDU and BJP were in alliance. Kavita SIngh is a member of parliament from Siwan, Bihar.
The Quint was unable to verify the origin of the footage used in the viral video.
Conclusion: An edited video is being shared to claim that BJP members used casteist slogans.
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