Congress leader Rahul Gandhi shared an old video of a massive crowd waiting to alight a crowded train at a Mumbai railway station, with the false claim that it showed large number of students in Uttar Pradesh flocking outside a packed train to take the Preliminary Eligibility Test (PET).
Gandhi shared this video to take a dig at the Uttar Pradesh government for not making provisions for students taking the test to reach the examination centers. After being called out for the erroneous claim, Gandhi deleted the tweet.
The video, however, is at least six years old, and has been debunked by BOOM last year when it went viral with the false claim of showing a massive crowd at Mumbai's Borivali station on February 1, 2021, when the Maharashtra government restarted local trains since the beginning of the pandemic.
On October 15, 2022, the UP PET exams were held, leading to reports of massive crowding of public transportations by students to reach their respective examination centers. The post was shared by Gandhi in this backdrop.
A BOOM reporter was able to spot the tweet on Tweetdeck and take a screenshot (provided below). However, when he opened the tweet he found it to be deleted.
While we could not archive the tweet - due to it being deleted shortly after being posted - we were able to find it on Twitter analytics tool Trendsmap.
The caption tweeted with the video was - "फॉर्म - 37 लाख खाली पद - गिनती के! इन युवाओं को सालाना 2 करोड़ रोज़गार का झांसा दिया गया था, लेकिन इन तस्वीरों में बस देश के शिक्षित बेरोज़गार युवाओं की बेबसी दिख रही है। ये साफ़ है कि प्रधानमंत्री आंखें मूंद कर बैठे हैं और नौजवान ठोकरें खाने पर मजबूर हैं।"
After deleting his initial tweet with the old video, Gandhi posted another tweet with the exact same caption, but with a photo which showed the interior of a crowded train.
Fact-Check
BOOM observed the thumbnail from the screenshot of the tweet and recognised it as a local train in Mumbai.
We also noticed that the same video had gone viral last year with the claim that it showed a crowded local train at Mumbai's Borivali station on February 1, 2021 - the date when the Maharashtra government started the local train services in Mumbai.
BOOM had then debunked that claim, after finding out that the video had been on the internet since 2016.
The video uploaded on March 21, 2016 in its description does not identify the railway station but says, "Amazing mumbai local crowd".
We had also contacted a Western Railway spokesperson earlier in 2021, who told BOOM, "The video is old and the situation currently is not like this. Even on February 1 and during the pandemic, the crowds were controlled with our staff and the Railway police ensuring no over crowding takes place. We have not received reports of such crowding at any railway station."
While we could not confirm when and where the video was taken exactly, our fact-check reveals that it is at least six years old, and unrelated to crowding of public transportation during the UP PET on Saturday.