Old Video Linked With Protests Over Job Exam Irregularities in Uttar Pradesh

The 2019 video showed the UP police lathi-charging anti-CAA protestors in Lucknow.

A video showing a group of policemen lathi-charging a crowd of protesters has gone viral with a claim that it shows the Uttar Pradesh police beating up a protesting group of teacher aspirants.

This claim comes in the backdrop of protests over alleged irregularities in the 2019 Uttar Pradesh exam to recruit 69,000 assistant teachers.

However, we found the viral video was not related to the protests of teacher aspirants. The 2019 video showed the UP police lathi-charging a group of people protesting against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) in Lucknow.

CLAIM

Some of the people sharing video wrote a sarcastic caption and said, "69000 शिक्षक भर्ती के मामले में बच्चों को ज्वाइनिंग लेटर देते हुए योगी जी की पुलिस।".

[Translation: Yogi ji's police giving joining letters to the people in the 69,000 teacher recruitment case.]

Several such posts were made on Facebook and Twitter, archives of some of which can be found here, here and here.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

We used the InVID WeVerify Google Chrome extension to extract keyframes from the viral video. We then ran a reverse image search on some of the keyframes and that lead us to a tweet by a journalist called Saurabh Trivedi.

Trivevdi had tweeted the same viral video on 19 December 2019 and the caption said, "Lucknow Police lathi-charged people who gathered to protest against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and the National Register of Citizens."

Taking a cue from the tweet, we conducted a keyword search and found news reports talking about the incident.

A tweet published by The Indian Express carried a frame from the viral video taken from a different angle. On comparing the two, we found a few similarities.

We also found that the same clip was being shared in 2019 with a claim that it showed the Gujarat police lathi-charging anti-CAA protestors in Ahmedabad. The Ahmedabad police later clarified that the video was from Lucknow and not Gujarat.

What is the Protest Over Jobs Irregularities?

The UP government held a major examination in 2019 to recruit 69,000 assistant school teachers. But the entire process has faced several allegations of irregularities related to quota allocation within the merit list.

Protests over the same have been going on for over two years, especially by candidates belonging from the Scheduled Caste and OBC.

In December last year, a some people protesting against the irregularities were lathi-charged while they were on their taking out a candlelight march to the Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s residence. A video of the incident was shared by Samajwadi Party.

69000 शिक्षक भर्ती में पिछड़ों-दलितों का आरक्षण मारने वाले CM अब लाठियां बरसा रहे हैं।

लखनऊ में शांतिपूर्ण तरीके से कैंडल मार्च निकाल रहे 69000 शिक्षक भर्ती के अभ्यार्थियों पर पुलिस द्वारा बर्बर लाठीचार्ज दुखद एवं शर्मनाक!

युवा बेरोजगारों इंकलाब होगा, बाइस में बदलाव होगा। pic.twitter.com/t6H56O8ydX

— Samajwadi Party (@samajwadiparty) December 4, 2021

Later that month, UP minister Dr Satish Dwivedi said that the about 6,000 candidates of reserved category affected by the discrepancy in the process of reservation were supposed to get appointed on 6 January.

Clearly, an old video showing the Lucknow police lathi-charging a group of anti-CAA protestors was falsely linked with the protest of job irregularities in the teachers aspirants case.

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