Old Video of Telangana MLA Facing Scrutiny Viral Ahead of Assembly Elections

This video dates back to 2018 and is being falsely shared as recent during the Telangana elections.

A video showing a Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS)'s Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) from the Jubilee Hills constituency in Telangana, Maganti Gopinath, being questioned by a woman has gone viral.

What is the claim?: Those sharing have claimed that recently, a woman publicly scrutinised Gopinath for "neglecting public issues", ahead of the 2023 Telangana elections.

Who shared it?: This video was shared by Vishnu Vardhan Reddy, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) State Vice President from Andhra Pradesh on his official X (formerly Twitter) account.

(Archives of similar claims can be found here, here and here.)

What is the truth?: While this incident did take place, it is not a recent video. It dates back to November 2018.

• The woman questioned Gopinath when he was campaigning during the 2018 Telangana state elections.

How did we find out?: We divided the viral video into multiple keyframes and ran a Google reverse image search on some of them.

• We found a video on YouTube by Raj News Telugu Official dated 10 November 2018.

• We compared the frames of the two videos and found similarities.

• The video was uploaded with the caption that read, "Jubilee Hills TRS Ex MLA Maganti Gopinath Insulted in Election Campaign."

• We translated one of the the captions appearing on the video from Telugu to English and it loosely translated to: "Locals are angry that the promises given in the past have not been fulfilled."

• We also found a similar video uploaded by A18 Telangana News on 10 November 2018 with the caption, "A Woman Insulted the TRS Jubilee Hills Candidate Gopinath Maganti During an Election Rally."

• We noticed that the scarf of the person the viral video had the letters TRS written on it, which stood for Telangana Rashtra Samithi.

• The Quint reported on 5 October 2022 that the party led by K Chandrashekhar Rao (KCR) had announced a change in name from TRS to the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS).

• The Election Commission of India (ECI) gave its nod to this change in December 2022.

Conclusion: While the public did express their anger towards the Jubilee Hills MLA, it is not a recent video and dates back to 2018. It is being falsely linked to the ongoing Telangana state elections.

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