Fact Check: Morphed ad links actor Karthik Aryan with Congress; actor clarifies

Hyderabad: An advertisement starring Bollywood actor Karthik Aryan is being widely shared on social media. Users claim that he is affiliated with the Indian National Congress.

The post is being shared with the caption: “Finally Bollywood has woken up towards the Indian National Congress. Bollywood heartthrob Kartik Aryan has extended his support to Indian National Congress in #MadhyaPradeshElections2023.’

Fact Check

NewsMeter found the claim to be false as the viral ad is morphed.

Recently, Kartik Aaryan starred in a promo Ad for Disney+ Hotstar as the channel announced the free availability of the ICC Men's World Cup and films on the mobile app. The ad was released on September 23, 2023. A few days later, a dubbed version of the same video resurfaced on social media to show that the actor was promoting the political party for the upcoming elections in Madhya Pradesh.

Taking it to X, the actor shared a tweet dated 31st Oct 2023 along with the real version of the video to clarify from his end that the viral video is utterly unrelated to him and is morphed.

Aryan tweets, ‘This is the REAL AD @DisneyPlusHS, Rest all is Fake’

Over a simple keyword search, we found the same ad uploaded on the official YouTube channel of Disney+Hotstar on 27 September 2023.

We also found a media report on The Indian Express carrying the same report title 'Supporting Congress in viral video, calls the morphed clip misleading, mischievous'.

The report states: “'Actor Kartik Aarya via his team has called out the morphed video of him supporting Congress candidate Kamal Nath in the upcoming Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections. The video is originally that of a digital platform and images of the politician have been superimposed on the OTT platform’s visuals. Kartik has clarified that he has no affiliations with any political group.”

For confirmation, we found similar reports on multiple mainstream media outlets including The Times of India and Hindustan Times as well.