Authors
Kushel HM is a mechanical engineer-turned-journalist, who loves all things football, tennis and films. He was with the news desk at the Hindustan Times, Mumbai, before joining Newschecker.
A video of defence minister Rajnath Singh has gone viral, where the BJP leader is heard criticising the ‘prime minister’ over inflation. Singh says in Hindi, “Our prime minister regularly assures us that brothers and sisters you don’t have to be worried, inflation will be under control within six months. Nine years have passed, what kind of wrong assurance has the prime minister given…”
The 26-second video also carries a text stating that Singh’s remarks were better late than never and that he was at least brave enough to speak about it now.
Fact check
Newschecker first did a search using the keywords “Rajnath Singh criticises Modi”, “Rajnath Singh Modi inflation”, but we neither found any video nor reports about such a speech.
We then ran a reverse image search of keyframes of the video, which did not lead us to any relevant results. However, we noticed a comment by a user pointing out that the video was from 2013. Taking this as a cue, we ran a search on Youtube with the keywords “Rajnath Singh BJP rally 2013”. The thumbnail of the first result, titled “Shri Rajnath Singh speech in Jan Aakrosh Rally: 21.04.2013”, was similar to the keyframes of the viral post. The video, 24 minutes and 26 seconds long, was uploaded on April 22, 2013.
While scanning the video, we heard his now viral quote hitting out at the prime minister for not controlling price rise. The quote, as seen in the viral video, can be heard from the 5:25 mark. Congress’s Manmohan Singh was India’s prime minister in 2013, so it is clearly understood that his remarks were directed at Singh, and not Modi.
We then ran a keyword search with the terms “Rajnath Manmohan Singh 2013”, “Rajnath Congress inflation 2013”, “Rajnath Jan Aakrosh Rally 2013”, which led us to news reports of the then BJP president taking on the Congress and Manmohan Singh for not tackling price rise. Although we could not find a news report of the same rally in the video, we learnt that Rajnath Singh had repeatedly attacked the government and Manmohan Singh over the country’s economy in the run-up to the 2014 general elections, which the BJP won. Rajnath Singh said the country was passing through a deep economic crisis and needed a “realistic” prime minister, not an economist like Manmohan Singh, while also stating that under NDA, inflation was always under control.
Conclusion
A clipped version of Rajnath Singh’s speech from a 2013 BJP rally, where he is attacking the then prime minister Manmohan Singh, for failing to control rising prices is being shared out of context. The viral clip is made to look like Singh is attacking PM Narendra Modi over the issue of inflation.
Result: Missing Context
Sources
Youtube video, April 22, 2013
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Authors
Kushel HM is a mechanical engineer-turned-journalist, who loves all things football, tennis and films. He was with the news desk at the Hindustan Times, Mumbai, before joining Newschecker.
