Old Video of Yogi Distributing Money Goes Viral Ahead of LS Polls
The video is not recent, and dates back to April 2012.
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CLAIM
A video, shared by one Ateeq Khan on a Facebook Group 'I support Ravish Kumar NDTV", shows Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath sitting on a chair even as a person from his team distributes money to a group of people gathered around him.
The video, captioned "Where is the election commissioner" insinuates an apparent 'cash for votes' scam.
The video, posted on 22 March, had over 65k shares at the time of writing this article.
TRUE OR FALSE?
The video is old and has been shared here out of context. Using the InVid extension, we conducted a reverse image search on one of the keyframes from the video on Yandex – one of the results for which was titled "Yogi Adityanath_0416.AVI."
A subsequent search of this keyword on YouTube led us to the same video, which was uploaded on the platform on 21 April 2012.
The Quint then got in touch with the user who had uploaded the video – one Vinay Kumar Gautam.
Gautam clarified that the video is not of Adityanath bribing people for votes, but from when the current CM was Lok Sabha MP from Gorakhpur.
"In April 2012, several farms in Gorakhpur were burnt. Then the MP from that seat, Yogi had come forward to give monetary support for farmers whose crops were burnt. He distributed about Rs 1,000 - Rs 2,000 per family, depending on the size of the plot," Gautam told The Quint.
The video has now been taken out of context to allege a possible 'cash for votes' scam, ahead of the general elections.
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