A video of singer Arijit Singh singing Bollywood song 'Gerua' (Translation: Orange) from 2015 Hindi film Dilwale, starring Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol, during the Kolkata International Film Festival (KIFF) on Thursday, 15 December is being shared on social media platforms.
Who shared the clip and what did they claim?: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) IT Cell head Amit Malviya and BJP Bengal State President Sukanta Majumdar shared a clip of the singer claiming that when West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee requested Singh to sing his favourite song, he sang 'Gerua' to signal that the future of the state was 'saffron'.
(Note: Swipe right to view both claims.)
An archive of this tweet can be seen here.
(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)
But...?: The video in the claim is edited. In the full video, Singh sings a Bengali song 'Bojhena Shey Bojhena' after someone on the stage requests it, and sings 'Gerua' to honour Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan, who was also present at the event.
How did we find out?: We visited the Kolkata International Film Festival's (KIFF) official website, which carried a livestream of the event's opening ceremony.
In attendance were West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, former Indian cricketer Sourav Ganguly, Bollywood actors Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan, Jaya Bachchan, Rani Mukherjee, singer Arijit Singh, among others.
We went through the livestream of the event, which was approximately three hours and 20 minutes long.
Here, we saw that singer Arijit Singh was speaking at the podium at the 2:16:28 timestamp in the video, and stayed there for approximately two minutes.
Singh thanked Mamata Banerjee for organising the festival and spoke about feeling happy and overwhelmed for being able to attend such an event "especially after COVID-19".
After his short speech, a person from the stage is heard requesting Singh to sing a Bengali song 'Bojhena Shey Bojhena,' to which he responds by saying "SRK (Shah Rukh Khan) is in front of me, how can I sing something else? So, I'll quickly sing two lines."
He then sings the requested Bengali song, before adding a line from 'Gerua' at the end.
Bengali news channel News18 Bangla also uploaded the section of the video where Arijit Singh takes the podium. You can watch it here.
Conclusion: Singer Arijit Singh did not sing 'Gerua' to send a political message to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. The video is edited, and the original shows him singing 'Gerua' to honour Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan.
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