Elderly Man Told Akhilesh Yadav 'You Only Built Mosques, Will Not Vote For You?' BJP Leaders Shared Old Video With False Claim

The first phase of polling in Uttar Pradesh will be held on February 10. Political parties are busy doing rallies. Meanwhile, a 14-second video of Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav is going viral on social media. In the viral video, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav can be seen talking to some villagers, which looks like a door to door campaign. It is being claimed that an elderly man said in front of Akhilesh Yadav that you have only built mosques, we will not vote for you.

BJP Social media national in charge, Preeti Gandhi, shared this video with a caption that reads, "तुमने केवल मस्जिद बनवाई, हम वोट नहीं देंगे!!" Posting without comments. Draw your own inference."

[English Translation: You only built mosques, we will not vote!! Posting without comments. Draw your own inference.]

BJP Uttar Pradesh's social media co-convenor Saurabh shared the video clip on Twitter and captioned it Hindi which reads, ""तुमने केवल मस्जिद बनवाई " ताऊ ने अखिलेश के सामने कहा हम वोट नहीं देंगे!! जय श्री राम."

[English Translation: You only built the mosque, Tau said in front of Akhilesh, we will not vote!! Jai Shree Ram]

It is being widely shared on Facebook and Twitter with a similar claim.

Claim:

An elderly man told Akhilesh Yadav that he has only built the mosque, we will not vote for you.

Fact Check:

The Logical Indian Fact Check team verified the claim and found it to be false. The viral video is almost two years old, and the elderly man was talking about EVM machines, not mosques.

We extracted different keyframes from the viral video using the InVid tool and conducted a Google reverse image search. It led us to the same video shared on November 12 2019, by Samajwadi Party spokesperson Roli Tiwai Mishra. The caption of the video reads in Hindi, "राष्ट्रीय अध्यक्ष श्री अखिलेश यादव जी को हार का कारण #EVM मशीन को बताते हुए सैफई के एक बुजुर्ग."

[English Translation: An elderly person from Saifai citing #EVM machine as the reason for the defeat of National President Shri Akhilesh Yadav Ji.]

It establishes that the video is not recent. We found the same video on several of Akhilesh Yadav's fan pages on searching more. On further investigations, we did an open keyword search and found the viral video uploaded on a YouTube channel named Hustle News dated November 2019. According to the video report, the old man talked about replacing the EVM machines and not building a mosque. The old man spoke about not voting for Akhilesh Yadav but for PM Modi. At 2:12 seconds of the video, the man can be heard saying, "Ee Lalla...ghoomo kam, set the machine on fire." On which Akhilesh Yadav replied, "earlier, booth capture was done by fighting and fighting. Now the BJP people are going smart in a new way." Then the man can be heard saying that if the machine will not be changed, then Dadda, you will never win and if the machine is changed, then Modi will not get a single vote.

We then shared this video with Samajwadi Party spokesperson Nasir Saleem. He told us that the viral video is not recent and was shared with a false claim. He called this video BJP's dirty political tricks to tarnish the image of the Akhilesh Yadav and Samajwadi Party.

The Logical Indian could not independently verify the origin of viral video. However, it is evident from our investigation that the viral video is almost two years old. The elderly man was talking about the tempering of the EVM machine, and the elders neither insulted Akhilesh Yadav nor talked about building mosques. Hence, the viral claim is false.

If you have any news that you believe needs to be fact-checked, please email us at factcheck@thelogicalindian.com or WhatsApp at 6364000343.

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