According to viral social media posts, residents of Punjab are urging the Haryana voters not to vote for the Aam Aadmi Party.
Archived version of the post can be seen here.
Fact
On analysing the viral footage, we spotted a reporter interviewing a protester, and questioning, “who should the people of Adampur vote for then?”
Taking a clue, we looked up keywords “पंजाब,” “आदमपुर” “आम आदमी पार्टी” and “विरोध” (Punjab, Adampur, Aam Aadmi Party and Protest) on YouTube, which yielded a report by IBN24 News Network, dated 1 November 2022. It stated that a group of former-servicemen from Punjab arrived in Khairampur village in Adampur to urge voters to not vote for the AAP in the Adampur by-polls.
Around 4:30 minutes into the video, we spotted the same protester speaking against the AAP, as seen in the viral footage.
Furthermore, in the viral footage, the banner attached to the mini-truck carrying the protesters reads, “Reinstate the GoG scheme.”
We then looked up keywords “GoG Scheme,” “protest” and “Punjab” on Google, which led us to multiple reports from 2022 detailing the agitation by ex-servicemen demanding the reinstatement of the Guardians of Governance scheme.
One such report by the Hindustan Times, dated 13 September 2022, stated, “A large number of ex-servicemen marched toward the venue with black strips on their red turbans to mark their protest over the scrapping of the GoG scheme, a flagship programme of previous Captain Amarinder Singh government to hire ex-servicemen to monitor government programmes.”
Notably, a shorter version of the video had gone viral in November 2022, claiming to show an anti-AAP stir in Gujarat. The same was debunked by Newschecker on 11 November 2022, and can be seen here.
We could thus conclude that an old video of ex-servicemen from Punjab urging Haryana voters to vote against the AAP has been shared out of context amid ongoing Lok Sabha elections.
This story was originally published by Newschecker as part of the Shakti Collective. Apart from the headline, excerpt and introduction, this story has not been edited by ThePrint staff.