Claim
AAP convenor Arvind Kejriwal urges people to vote for Congress in the Delhi election.

Fact
Video is clipped from a 2017 Facebook Live by Kejriwal, ahead of the Punjab polls then, saying that BJP and Akali Dal are urging people to switch their votes to the Congress.

A six-second video has gone viral on voting day for Delhi’s 70 Assembly seats on Wednesday (February 5), purportedly showing AAP convenor and former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal appealing to voters to vote for rival party Congress, instead of the BJP. The Delhi election is a high-stakes three-way contest between the AAP, which is seeking a third consecutive term, the BJP, aiming to unseat the incumbent government, and Congress, hoping for a political resurgence in the national capital.

The archived version of the post can be seen here.

Fact Check

Newschecker noticed that Kejriwal purportedly urges citizens to not give their vote to BJP, but to the Congress, which raised our doubts on whether the video was clipped misleadingly and shared out of context, considering AAP is looking to retain Delhi in the crucial elections.

We then ran a keyword search for “edited video Kejriwal Congress votes”, which led us to this 1-minute 30-second Facebook Live by Kejriwal on February 2, 2017, calling out an edited video being circulated by Congress and [Shiromani] Akali Dal showing him appealing for votes for Congress.

Taking a cue from this, we ran a relevant keyword search, which led us to a 1-minute 50-second Facebook Live, dated January 30, 2017, by Kejriwal before the then Punjab Assembly elections, captioned in Hindi as, “RSS and Akali Dal have started transferring their votes in favour of Congress”.

Kejriwal says in Hindi, “There are reports in the past couple of days of door-to-door campaigns by workers of the RSS and the Akali Dal, urging voters not to support the Akali Dal and the BJP in the upcoming election. Instead, they are advocating for votes for the Congress party… There are widespread claims of Akali Dal, RSS and BJP switching their votes to the Congress party…These parties are working on a shared goal to prevent the Aam Aadmi Party from winning the election and forming a government…”.

We can see the viral excerpt from the 00:25 mark, where it appears that he is appealing to voters to go for Congress.

We then came across this Business Standard report, dated January 29, 2017, stating that then Kejriwal accused the BJP, Shiromani Akali Dal and the Congress of working together against the AAP in Punjab, which was going to polls on February 4. “…Kejriwal claimed to have learnt from his “sources” that the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and the Rashtriya Sawayamsevak Sangh (RSS) were sending messages to voters in Punjab “not to vote for them, but for the Congress,” read the report, which confirms that the viral video is clipped and being shared misleadingly.

Also Read: Video From Barsana Shared To Show Crowd At Mahakumbh

Conclusion

An old, clipped video has been falsely shared as AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal asking for votes for Congress in the 2025 Delhi Assembly election.

Result: False

Source
Facebook Live, Arvind Kejriwal, January 30, 2017
Facebook Live, Arvind Kejriwal, February 2, 2017
Business Standard report, January 29, 2017

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