Fact Check: Old speech of Bhojpuri star Khesari Lal shared as actor criticising current JDU-RJD government in Bihar
The video is from 2021 when Bihar had a Nitish Kumar-led government in alliance with the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP).
By Md Mahfooz Alam Published on 13 Jan 2024 9:32 AM GMT
Screengrab of the post making the misleading claim. (Source: X/@firstbiharnews)
Hyderabad: A video of Bhojpuri actor and singer Khesari Lal Yadav speaking on the backwardness of Bihar is in circulation on social media. In the 4:33-minute video, he speaks on the unavailability of good hospitals, schools, and the migration of people to other states for jobs. He indirectly hits at politicians but doesn’t name anyone.
On January 12, the X handle of the media outlet FirstBiharJharkhand shared the video claiming Yadav while expressing his heartfelt feelings, hit out at chief minister Nitish Kumar and deputy CM Tejashwi Yadav.
(Source: X/@firstbiharnews)
Fact Check
NewsMeter found that the video is from 2021 when Bihar had a Nitish Kumar-led government in alliance with the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP).
While scrolling through the comments on the post, we found a user saying that the video had been clipped from a 12-minute-long video and was two years old.
Taking this cue, we ran a relevant keyword search on YouTube and found an 11:38-minute video published by a verified channel, Ujala Entertainment on October 31, 2021. The caption stated that Yadav had hit out at the Nitish Kumar-led government in the Kaimur district of Bihar.
We watched the complete video and found the viral clip at around 4:22 minutes. However, we did not find Yadav calling out any political leader by name in the video.
Moreover, we found that JDU, in alliance with the BJP and other small parties, had won the Bihar State Assembly elections in 2020 under the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). Nitish Kumar was sworn in as the chief minister.
However, he snapped ties with the BJP in August 2022 and formed a new government under the grand alliance with Rashtriya Janta Dal (RJD) and other parties which were in Opposition. RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav took oath as deputy chief minister.
The video of Khesari Lal Yadav is from 2021 when there was an NDA government in Bihar. Hence, we conclude that the claim that the video is recent and shows Yadav criticising the current government under the JDU-RJD alliance is misleading.
