A video, which shows a massive crowd with some people sitting on top of buses while listening to Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) convenor and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, is being shared with a claim that the video is from Gujarat, where elections are due later this year.
However, we found that the claim is false and the video is from a Kisan Maha Sammelan, which was organised by the party in Punjab's Moga district in March 2021. This was ahead of the Assembly elections in the state that were held in 2022.
CLAIM
A user 'AAP Sunil Jodhpur' shared this video on 2 October and it had been viewed over 32,000 times at the time of writing this story.
An archive version of the tweet can be found here.
(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)
Several other users shared the video and wrote, "ओ भाई साहब क्या जनसैलाब है गुजरात की जनता बसों ओर सड़कों पर बैठकर केजरीवाल का भाषण सुन रही है." [Translation: Oh my god, what a massive crowd. People in Gujarat are sitting on road and on top of buses to listen to Kejriwal.]
An archived version of the post can be seen here.
(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
On carefully watching the video, we could hear Kejriwal's audio where he could be heard saying, "They hatched a plan to convert nine stadiums into jails and keep the farmers as prisoners."
Taking this as the first clue, we conducted a Twitter search using keywords "farmers stadium jail Kejriwal rally" and came across a tweet by NDTV from 21 March 2021, which noted that the comment was made at a Kisan Maha Sammelan, held in Moga district in Punjab on the same day.
Using the location, date, and the event as a clue from the aforementioned tweet, we conducted another keyword search and found a Facebook post from 21 March 2021 by the current Power Minister of Punjab, Harbhajan Singh E.T.O.
He tagged the location as Bagha Purana in Punjab's Moga, where the event was held.
Since this was a slightly better quality version of the video, we could notice two more things:
We noticed a poster of Kejriwal, albeit blurred.
A poster could be seen.
(Source: Facebook/Harbhajan Singh)
We noticed a projector on which Kejriwal's speech was being broadcast.
The poster seen in the video shared by Singh was similar to the ones seen at the Bagha Purana event.
A screenshot from BBC News Punjabi's report from Bagha Purana.
(Source: BBC News Punjabi/Screenshot)
We also found a tweet by the official Twitter handle of the Aam Aadmi Party, which showed an aerial view of the venue. We were able to match a few elements of the video with the viral one.
There are several news reports about this event being held in the run-up to the Assembly elections in Punjab. Clearly, the video shows an AAP rally in Punjab and not Gujarat, as claimed.
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