Fact Check- Video of PM Modi celebrating his birthday is FALSE
By Mounika Dasari Published on 19 Sep 2020 1:30 PM GMTHyderabad: Prime Minister Narendra Modi celebrated his 70th birthday on September 17, 2020. On one hand, birthday greetings were pouring in for the PM and on the other, the youth in the country observed it as "National Unemployment Day". With this, hashtags like "#NationalBergerGuardday" and "#NationalUnemployementDDay" were among the top trends on Twitter.
For the last few days, unemployed youth have been expressing their resentment against the government for not taking up any recruitment. Keeping this in mind, a video of PM Modi started going viral on social media on Thursday.
The viral video claimed that many youth were ending their life in the wake of the unemployment. Yet, Modi is celebrating his birthday with industrialists regardless of it. In the video, PM Modi is seen with some people and drinking something from a glass. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu too was present in the video along with Modi.
Fact Check
This video is from July 2017 and was shot in Israel. Hence, the claim made in the video is FALSE.
A Facebook page, Modi Lies, posted the video with a post in Hindi as, "Sir is celebrating his birthday by hitting the glass with industrialists and the youth of the country is suffering from unemployment." This post has notched more than 12,000 likes.
With the help of keywords, Newsmeter found many media reports related to this video. This video dates back to July 2017, when PM Modi went to Haifa city on the last day of his Israel tour.
Here, Israeli PM Netanyahu told Modi about a unique mobile water filtration plant. This filtration plant makes the saltwater of the sea drinkable. On this occasion, seawater filtered from the plant was drunk by everyone present there, including PM Modi. The viral video belongs to the same time.
The video of PM Modi is an old video taken during his Israel visit and not of his birthday celebration. Hence, the claim is FALSE.