A video of Union Minister Smriti Irani speaking at a public address is being shared across social media claiming that she knows that the Samajwadi Party (SP) is going to come to power in the state.
In the video, Irani is heard saying, "You might be thinking, the candidate is roaming around with a hand pump but I'm talking about cycles. But if RLD (Rashtriya Lok Dal) gets votes and support, the red caps (Samajwadi Party) will form the government."
However, the video is clipped. In a longer version of the video, the Union Minister refers to the Ayodhya firings of 1990, reminding people that a vote of the RLD would mean voting for SP, as both parties are in alliance for the polls.
CLAIM
The video is being shared to claim that even Union Minister Smriti Irani has accepted that Akhilesh Yadav will come to power in the state.
An archived versionof this post can be seen here.
(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
Using keywords from Irani's statement, we looked for reports related to the video. The results led us to a report by Asianet News Hindi, which carried the statement from the video as its headline.
The article carried the statement as its headline.
(Source: AsianetNewsHindi/Screenshot)
The report mentioned that Irani was speaking at Chhaprauli in Baghpat, Uttar Pradesh and was campaigning for BJP candidate Satyendra Singh.
In the video shared within the article, Irani is heard speaking about the 1990 Ayodhya firings, when former CM Mulayam Singh Yadav ordered security forces to shoot at karsewaks who were marching towards Ayodhya, killing 16.
She then goes on to proclaim that she is asking people to vote for the innocent rambhakts (devotees of Lord Ram) that the SP government killed, asserting that a vote for RLD would lead to a SP government being formed in the state.
Towards the end of the video, she states that the women of Uttar Pradesh told her that they would not let that happen as they had suffered under the previous government and wanted to hear the same from the men.
We looked for more reports using Hindi keywords and 'Baghpat' as search terms. Amar Ujala reported that Irani had also taken a dig at other political parties, saying that the 'elephant' (Bahujan Samaj Party) and 'hand' (Congress) had not looked after women in the state, never thinking to build toilets for them.
The video was also uploaded to Hindi news portal News24's verified YouTube channel.
Clearly, a clipped video of Smriti Irani's public address in Baghpat, Uttar Pradesh was shared with a misleading claim that she accepted that Samajwadi Party would win the upcoming elections in the state.
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