An old video showing Janata Dal (United) leader Nitish Kumar meeting with leaders of the INDIA bloc is falsely viral as a meeting that took place after the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections.
BOOM found that the viral video is from April 2023, when Kumar's JD(U) was part of the INDIA bloc. Kumar left the INDIA bloc to join the National Democratic Alliance ahead of the Lok Sabha elections in January 2024.
The results of the 18th Lok Sabha elections turned out to be a shocker, with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party failing to gain majority seats in the parliament by 32 seats, and resorting to its coalition partners under the NDA, to form the government, which includes Kumar's JD(U), with 12 seats. Since the results, social media has been rife with speculation that Kumar, known for switching alliances, will leave the NDA to help the INDIA bloc form the government. The video is viral with the false claim in this backdrop.
The video shows Kumar meeting Congress leaders Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi, along with RJD leader Tejashvi Yadav.
The video is being shared with a viral caption in Hindi, which translates to English as, "What has happened? The game is still on in the Congress office. Government of India 🇮🇳 🤞🏻🫡🥇 #indiaallinace #KhataKhatScheme"
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The same has also been shared widely on X, which can be viewed here.
Fact Check
Looking through the posts on X, BOOM found many users suggesting that the video is old, and shows a meeting that took place while Kumar was with the INDIA bloc.
Taking cue from this, BOOM did a keyword search with "nitish kumar rahul gandhi tejashvi kharge meeting", and set the search parameters to look for articles before January 2024, when Kumar switched from INDIA to NDA.
This led us to multiple video reports by news outlets showing a meeting between Kumar and the INDIA bloc leaders in April 2023. The videos showed the leaders wearing the exact white outfits as seen in the viral video.
A report by Midday, showing a very similar scenario, wrote in its caption, "The meeting was led by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, Mallikarjun Kharge, JDU chief Nitish Kumar and RJD chief Tejashwi Yadav. This meeting took place at Mallikarjun Kharge's house."
We compared keyframes from the Midday video to the viral clip, and found several stark similarities, which proved that the viral clip is from the same meeting being reported by Midday.
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The meeting was also covered by NDTV and Indian Express.