The X (formerly Twitter) account of the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) West Bengal wing shared a video showing West Bengal Chief Minister and All India Trinamool Congress' (AITC) Chief Mamata Banerjee speaking at a public event.
What does she say?: In the clip, Banerjee says, “We want you to remain poor, meaning you eat whatever you have at home and survive.”
What is the claim?: Sharing this short clip, BJP West Bengal said, "Mamata Banerjee wants to keep the people of Bengal trapped in poverty. She has no vision left for the state's future. The time has come to uproot the Bangla-Birodhi TMC government."
In the longer version of the video, Banerjee tells her party's workers and leaders not to be greedy and to survive with what they have at home in order to better serve the people of West Bengal.
How do we know?: A reverse image search on the clip led us to X posts and news reports from July 2024, which mentioned that they showed Banerjee speaking at a Martyr's Day rally on 21 July 2024 in Kolkata, West Bengal.
Taking a cue from this, we looked for the full video on AITC's verified YouTube channel.
We found that it was streamed live on 21 July 2024 and was titled 'Paying tribute to the Martyrs of 21st July Shahid Dibas at Dharmatala'.
The day is observed in remembrance of 13 party workers who were killed in 1993 after police action, due to lathi-charge firing during a protest demanding that voter ID be made the sole document required for voting, as per the Indian Express.
We went through the livestream, which featured musical performances and was attended by several TMC leaders, including Abhishek Banerjee and Yusuf Pathan, as well as Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav.
Banerjee took the stage at the 2:44:46 mark in the video addressing the crowd, acknowledging Yadav's attendance, and speaking to him about the SP's strength in Uttar Pradesh shortly after the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
At around the 2:57:53-minute mark comes the context for the clip in the viral claim.
“I am telling this to all Municipality, Panchayat, MLAs and MPs that we must not receive any complaints against you as a party. If we receive any complaints, we might have to take necessary actions, keep this in mind. We want you to remain poor, meaning you eat whatever you have at home and survive. We don’t need to be greedy. We want to be people’s friend.”Mamata Banerjee, West Bengal Chief Minister, Shahid Dibas 2024
Here, it becomes clear that Banerjee was telling her party workers that they should make do with what they have and not be greedy so they can help the people of the state instead.
Conclusion: The BJP has shared a clipped video of Mamata Banerjee to falsely claim that she wants to keep the people of West Bengal in poverty.
(With inputs from Raqeeb Raza.)
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