Fact Check: Rahul Gandhi says elections in Pakistan are more credible than in India? No, video is a deepfake

Hyderabad: A video purportedly showing the Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, speaking during a Parliament session is going viral.

Those sharing the video claim it shows the Congress MP saying that elections in Pakistan are more credible than the elections in India.

In the video, addressing the other MPs, Rahul Gandhi could be allegedly heard saying, “The thing that stitches together the entire concept of modern India, stitches together the fabric of modern India, brings people together, allows them to build this great nation, is being attacked by these people. They’re destroying it, you know that they’re destroying it, I know they’re destroying it.”

“The election in Pakistan is actually more credible than what we see here. Every party ended up forming the government in the province where its victory made sense based on political realities and voter trends. I’d like to conclude that the biggest anti-national act you can do is ‘Vote Chori’. There’s no bigger anti-national act you can do than ‘Vote Chori’. Because when you destroy the vote, you destroy the fabric of this country. You destroy modern India, you destroy the idea of India,” concluded the Congress leader as other Members of Parliament appeared to express their agreement.

Sharing the video on X, a user wrote, “Breaking News: Rahul Gandhi blames Modi for destroying Indian democracy. Even Pakistan has a better democratic system than India. Modi has done massive rigging and India is converting into an all-out totalitarian dictatorship.” (Archive)

Fact Check

NewsMeter found that the claim is false. The video clip of Rahul Gandhi speaking in the Parliament about Pakistan contains deepfake and AI-generated content.

Analysis of the video

Upon close inspection, we found that the clip is a Lok Sabha proceeding recording from Sansad TV. This is inferred by its logo on the top right. The date of the recording is shown as December 9 at 16:14.

Currently, the Winter Session of the Parliament is ongoing, scheduled from December 1 to 19.

Using this information, we checked what Rahul Gandhi had spoken about on December 9 during the proceedings.

On December 9, Rahul Gandhi in Lok Sabha blamed the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Election Commission of India (ECI), calling ‘Vote Chori’ the ‘biggest anti-national act’.

This was also mentioned in a report published by Hans India on December 10.

A report published by Financial Express on December 9 also showed Rahul Gandhi stating that the thing that stitches together the entire concept of modern India is being attacked by these people, referring to the ruling BJP.

However, neither the report nor any other news articles or credible social media posts stated that Rahul Gandhi claimed elections in Pakistan are credible than ones in India.

This addition of the statement hinted that the clip may have been tampered with.

What did Rahul Gandhi say?

We checked a video published by Sansad TV showing Rahul Gandhi’s speech in Lok Sabha on December 9. We checked the entire transcript of the speech on the day, but did not find any references to Pakistan.

In the video, at 16:19, Rahul Gandhi is seen using examples of traditional fabrics from different Indian states to illustrate his point about the significance of the vote in holding the nation together.

This part of the video does not show Rahul Gandhi talking about ‘Vote Chori’ or attacking the ruling BJP for it.

At the 26:55-minute mark in the video, at 16:39, Rahul Gandhi is heard saying, “The thing that stitches together the entire concept of modern India, stitches together the fabric of modern India, brings people together, allows them to build this great nation, is being attacked by these people. They’re destroying it. You know they’re destroying it. I know they’re destroying it. And they know they’re destroying it.”

This remark is immediately followed by, “And I’d like to conclude by saying that the biggest anti-national act you can do is ‘Vote Chori’. There is no bigger anti national act that you can do than ‘Vote Chori’ because when you destroy the vote, you destroy the fabric of this country. You destroy modern India, you destroy the idea of India.”

This confirms that Rahul Gandhi did not say, “The election in Pakistan is actually more credible than what we see here. Every party ended up forming the government in the province where its victory made sense based on political realities and voter trends.”

This showed that those statements were artificially inserted into his speech on the vote chori made on December 9.

Analysing the visuals of the controversial remarks

In the portion of the video where Pakistan is mentioned, Rahul Gandhi’s voice sounds noticeably different from the rest of the video and his lip movements appear slightly out of sync with the audio. These are usual indicators of content generated using Artificial Intelligence (AI).

We used a deepfake and an AI detector tool, Deepware, to determine whether the video clip was made using AI. Two out of four models detected the video clip to be a deepfake.

Another AI detector, Hiya Audio Intelligence tool, also determined that the voice seems to be generated or modified by AI with only a 4 per cent match with live human markers.

Therefore, it is clear that the viral video clip showing Rahul Gandhi making controversial remarks contains deepfake visuals and AI-generated content. Rahul Gandhi did not mention Pakistan while speaking about vote chori in the Parliament.

Therefore, NewsMeter concludes that the viral claim is false.