Old Video of Two BJP Factions Clashing Shared With False Claim

The three-year-old video is being shared with a claim that it shows a crowd attacking BJP leaders ahead of polls.

Fact-Check | An old video showing two groups of the BJP fighting it out is being shared as recent. 

(Photo: The Quint)

Ahead of the upcoming state Assembly elections, a video showing people fighting in public has been shared by several social media users with a claim that it shows a crowd beating up leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

However, we found that the video was three years old and showed a clash between two factions of the BJP in Rajasthan's Ajmer.

CLAIM

Those sharing the video said, "मोदी लहर अब बीजेपी नेताओं पर बना गयी कहर. BJP नेता की जनता ने की पिटाई कैसे हो बे भाजपाइयों".

[Translation: The Modi wave has now wreaked havoc for BJP leaders, how can people thrash their own BJP leader?]

An archive of the post can be found here.

(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)

More such posts were seen on Facebook and Twitter, archives of which can be found here, here, and here.

WHAT WE FOUND

Using the InVID WeVerify Google Chrome extension, we extracted keyframes from the viral video and conducted a reverse image search on some of them.

While going through the search results, we found the same video posted with similar claims back in 2021, which has the logo of a channel called "News4Rajasthan".

We then used "Rajasthan" as a keyword and came across the same video posted by news agency ANI on Twitter on 12 April 2019.

The tweet said, "Two groups of BJP workers clash during a rally in Masuda, Ajmer." We looked for news reports on the incident and found that the fight erupted when a BJP candidate, Bhagirath Choudhary, came to address a rally in Ajmer's Masuda.

According to a report in The Times of India, Choudhary's supporters clashed with the supporters of former MLA from Masuda, Sushil Kanwar Palara.

Clearly, an old video of a fight between two groups of BJP supporters was shared with a false claim that it showed a crowd attacking BJP leaders in an election-bound state.

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