An old video of Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, overlaid with a fake audio, is circulating on social media with false claims that Hindu saints and sadhus have refused to support Bharatiya Janata Party ahead of the Assembly polls.
The video shows visuals of Chouhan speaking to Hindu saints through video conferencing and appealing them to campaign for the BJP. The Hindu saint, whose voice has also been overlaid with a fake audio, can be heard refusing Chouhan's appeal and he further says that the party will not receive more than 60 seats in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly polls this time.
BOOM found that the viral video is from 2020 COVID lockdown where Chouhan addressed several sections of the society on ways to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic; we also found that Chouhan's voice has been replicated and inserted in the video.
BOOM has earlier fact-checked several other videos, which were edited using a fake audio of Shivraj Singh Chouhan. Read our fact checks here, here and here.
Five states including Madhya Pradesh, Telangana, Chhattisgarh, Mizoram and Rajasthan are scheduled to go on polls in November. Madhya Pradesh will vote for on November 17 and results will be declared on December 3.
The video has been captioned in Hindi as, "Saints have refused to campaign in favor of Shivraj and BJP, the saint said that this time BJP will be limited to only 50 seats." (Original text in Hindi: वायरल वीडियो *संत महात्माओं ने शिवराज और बीजेपी के पक्ष में प्रचार करने से किया इंकार, संत बोले इस बार बीजेपी 50 सीटों में ही सिमट जायेगी।*)
The video has also been posted on X (formerly known as Twitter) with the same claim.
Fact Check
BOOM observed the video closely and was able to ascertain that the audio was not in sync with Shivraj Singh Chouhan's lip movements. We then ran a relevant keyword search with 'Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Hindu saints and found a video uploaded by IBC 24's YouTube channel on April 28, 2020. The video description reads, "साधु-संतों से CM Shivraj Singh ने की चर्चा, कोरोना की चुनौतियों पर हुई चर्चा" (Translation: CM Shivraj Singh discussed the challenges of Coronavirus with sages and saints).
According to the video, Chouhan spoke to different sections of the society because of the continuous increase in the COVID-19 cases in the state. He also spoke to Hindu saints and from the country through video conferencing about the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic. Several visuals of the YouTube video are similar to the viral video.
Upon further verification, we found Shivraj Singh Chouhan' Facebook post from April 28, 2020 featuring the LIVE video from the event. The interaction of 1 hour 20 minutes was recorded live on Facebook. The video was captioned as, #COVID19 की चुनौतियों एवं एकात्म बोध विषय पर वीडियो कोन्फ्रेंस।" (Translation: Video conference on the challenges of #COVID19 and sense of unity)
In the video, Chouhan can be heard discussing with the representatives of the Sant Samaj on ways to deal with the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. He also speaks about celebrating the incarnation day of Adiguru Shankaracharya as 'Integral Realization Day'.
Apart from this, the Hindu saints present through video conferencing present their views. Nowhere in the entire video can Chouhan be heard speaking about the upcoming BJP polls.
Below are comparisons from the viral video and visuals from the Facebook Live video of Shivraj Singh Chouhan.
Furthermore, we also noticed that the used audio in the viral video has been recorded separately and cloned like Shivraj Singh Chouhan's voice and inserted to the video. We cannot rule out the possibility that an AI based cloned voice could have been used in the video.
We also checked if Chouhan has appealed to seers to campaign for the BJP ahead of the elections, but was unable to find any such reports.