An old video of a protest march against Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has been revived on Facebook ahead of by-elections on 28 Assembly seats to be held in the state on November 3.
BOOM found that the viral video is from a protest rally organised by Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) workers against Chouhan in 2018.
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The video is viral in the backdrop of the soon-to-be conducted MP by-polls which will see voting on 28 Assembly seats, of which 25 have been lying vacant after the resignation of the then Congress MLAs. The 25 MLAs who had resigned from the party had later joined Bharatiya Janata Party along with former Member of Parliament Jyotiraditya Scindia. Read more about the MP by-polls here.
The 70-second-long video shows a group of women carrying out a funeral procession of Chouhan while chanting slogans in Hindi. A voice-over says that ASHA workers from all over the district had taken out a protest rally against Chouhan demanding a hike in pay. A ticker on the top left of the screen reads Satna. Satna is a district of MP.
Watch the video below and check its archived version here.
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This and several other old videos from Madhya Pradesh have been revived and shared out of context in the run up to the by-polls.
Fact Check
BOOM searched the internet with the slogans chanted in the video as keywords (मामा नहीं कसाई है कंस का जुड़वाँ भाई है) and found the same video uploaded on YouTube and Facebook in 2018.
The Hindi voice-over in the video translates to 'Problems for Shivraj government in Madhya Pradesh seem to be piling up. Women working as government employees in the state took out a funeral procession of the Shivraj government and criticised the policies of the state government. The protest saw the participation of ASHA workers, women cooks from across the district. The ASHA workers claim that they are being given only 2000 rupees. This amount wouldn't suffice even for the food expenditure of the CM's dog'.
Watch the video uploaded on YouTube on October 18, 2018 below.
At the end of the video, the reporter mentions that the rally was taken out in Satna, MP.
BOOM looked up for news reports about ASHA workers' protest in the state in 2018 and found that women workers in several parts of MP had gone on protest on October 2, 2018 demanding fixed pay and travel allowance among other things.
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It's noteworthy that Chouhan was the chief minister of MP between 2013 and 2018. However, BJP lost the Assembly election in December 2018 and Congress leader Kamal Nath took oath as the new chief minister on December 17, 2018.
However, with 22 Congress MLAs resigning from the party, Kamal Nath government collapsed in 2020. On March 23, 2020 Chouhan was once again sworn in as the chief minister.