Fact Check: Video from previous farmers’ protest linked to ongoing unrest in 2024

Hyderabad: A video of a group of people traveling in JCB cranes is being widely circulating on social media with the claim that it shows farmers, protesting against the Central government demanding a legal guarantee for MSP on all crops, at Shambhu – a border crossing between Punjab and Haryana, 230 km north of Delhi.

“Bulldozers with Unfurled Flags of Kisan Andolan heading towards Delhi. #FarmersProtest2024,” wrote an X user who shared the video.

News is being shared that the farmers are equipping themselves with machinery like JCB and tractors to counter security forces stationed at Delhi’s borders.

According to a report, criticising the aggressive tactics of farmers, chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar stated, “We have earlier seen how protesters blockaded the Delhi border and how people were inconvenienced because of the year-long protest. This is not right to create an atmosphere like the farmers are attacking with an army of JCB, tractor, ration for a year, and whatnot.”

Fact Check

NewsMeter found that the claim is misleading as the video is old.

On carefully analyzing the viral video, we noticed a flag in the right-side corner of the video when the camera pans. It is the same flag being used by the farmers during the ongoing protest. This indicated that the video belonged to the farmers’ protest.

Then we performed a Google reverse image search of the video’s screenshots and found the same video uploaded on a YouTube channel titled ‘Farmer protest Farmer is coming on JCB Farmer with JCB at new delhi lal kila’ dated January 19, 2021. This indicated that the video is at least 3-years old.

We also found the video posted by multiple Facebook users dated January 20, 2021. Click here and here to view the posts. The date of publishing on both videos is January 2021.

Although we could not independently verify the origin of the video, we conclude that the video is not from the ongoing farmers’ protests.