A post is going viral on social media with a clip of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu and Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister Doddalahalli Kempegowda (DK) Shivakumar talking privately at the airport.
In the clip, both leaders gesture for their security staff to move aside before engaging in a brief conversation, which is being framed as a "secret political meeting".
What's the claim?: The viral post claims that Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar is preparing to leave the Congress and join the National Democratic Alliance, suggesting that the Congress government in Karnataka is on the verge of collapse.
Why is it being shared?: The video has surfaced after the Congress government in Karnataka crossed its halfway mark, reviving talk about the reported power-sharing agreement.
Under the agreement, Siddaramaiah would lead the government in the first half of the term, and DK Shivakumar would take over in the second half.
There were reports about a power tussle between the two, with many social media users exaggerating these internal tensions into claims that Shivakumar is being courted by the NDA.
What's the truth?: The claim is false.
The video is not recent.
It was recorded on 28 December 2023 at Bengaluru HAL Airport when Chandrababu Naidu and DK Shivakumar accidentally ran into each other while travelling separately.
What we found: We extracted keyframes from the viral video and ran them through Google’s reverse image search.
This led us to the original clip posted by ANI’s official X account, dated 28 December 2023.
A keyword search further took us to a news report by ABP Desam, also published on 28 December 2023, which reported on the run-in.
According to the report, Naidu was returning to Kuppam after visiting a party worker in Bengaluru, while Shivakumar was headed to another location on a different flight.
We also scanned recent political coverage and found no reports indicating that DK Shivakumar is in talks with the NDA or planning to defect from the Congress.
Conclusion: The claim that a recent secret meeting between Chandrababu Naidu and DK Shivakumar points to a plot to topple the Karnataka government is false. The video is from December 2023 and shows a brief, incidental airport encounter.
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