A blurred video of Prime Minister Narendra Modi waving at what seems to be an empty field, after getting off from a helicopter in West Bengal, has gone viral on the internet with misleading claims.
The viral clip comes while elections are being held in Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, and Puducherry.
However, we found the original high-resolution video, posted on The Bharatiya Janata Party's official Facebook page, where a crowd can be seen across the fencing of the field.
CLAIM
Two versions of the video are going viral. In one version, the video is blurred and muted to support the claim that PM Modi was waving at an empty ground. In another version, the original sound has been replaced with a Bollywood song.
The Indian National Congress’ official Twitter handle posted the video and later deleted it, which was archived by fact-checking organisation Alt News.
The national coordinator of All India Congress Committee's social media wing Lavanya Ballal also tweeted the viral video with a caption that read, “Waving at imaginary people is the latest trend. It's his STRENEAH. (sic)”
Several other Twitter handles also posted the same video. (Archived versions of some posts can be found here and here.)
The post was also shared on Facebook by some users. (An archived version of some posts can be found here and here.)
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
Using InVID WeVerify Google Chrome extension, we extracted the keyframes from the video and conducted a reverse image search. While going through the results, we came across a high-resultion video on the BJP’s Facebook page, which was posted on 1 April.
The caption of the video said, “Scenes from PM Narendra Modi's rally in Jaynagar have the unmissable message of Ashol Poriborton in Bengal.” In the video, a crowd can be seen at a distance behind the barricades. One can also hear loud cheer coming from the crowd and chants of Vande Mataram. Both these bits were removed in the viral video.
We also found news reports of PM Modi’s visit to Jayanagar, a place roughly 60 km from the state capital Kolkata.
Evidently, a blurred low-resolution video of PM Modi waving at people at an election rally was shared with misleading claims on social media.
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