An old video featuring several people holding placards urging others not to vote for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is circulating online with a misleading claim that it shows a worldwide protest against the BJP ahead of the Karnataka assembly elections this year.
BOOM found that the video shows an anti-BJP campaign that was carried out ahead of the West Bengal assembly elections in 2021.
Several people, in the video, can be seen holding a placard across different locations in the world. The placards contain the same text "No Vote To BJP" in English and "No division in Bengal" in Bengali written on it. The video is being shared as a protest before the Karnataka assembly polls that will be held on May 10, 2023.
The video is captioned as "Across the globe everyone says “NO VOTE to BJP” Karnataka Elections 2023".
Click here to view the tweet.
Click here to view the tweet.
Fact Check
BOOM did a related keyword search on Twitter and found that a Twitter handle named "No Vote To BJP" tweeted the same video on April 24, 2021.
The video was tweeted with a caption saying, "Bengalis across the world saying "No Vote To BJP"."
Click here to view the tweet.
We also noticed that account described itself as a platform for a no-vote campaign against the BJP ahead of the West Bengal assembly polls in 2021.
Taking a cue, we searched for news articles related to the "No Vote To BJP" campaign and found that a group of political activists set up the platform in West Bengal.
A forum named ‘Bengal Against Fascist RSS-BJP’ formulated the ‘No Vote to BJP’ campaign, according to The Quint in March 2021. The report added that the forum was formed after a meeting on January 4, 2021, with the intention of uniting people against Hindu nationalist organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the BJP.
The movement gained momentum over time and as per a report published by The Times Of India in April 2021, the campaign was spread to 20 districts in West Bengal.
One such protest in Kolkata where people can be seen holding "No Vote To BJP" placard at that time can be seen below.