Fact Check: Old video of IUML rally in Kasaragod falsely linked to Priyanka Gandhi’s Wayanad campaign in 2024
Congress faced controversy in the 2019 General Elections when IUML cadres waved the party’s green flags during Rahul Gandhi’s campaign in Wayanad.
By Sibahathulla Sakib Published on 24 Oct 2024 4:11 PM GMT
Claim: The video shows a crowd holding green flags campaigning for Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi in Wayanad.
Fact: This claim is false. The video is from Kasaragod in 2019.
Hyderabad: Wayanad constituency in Kerala has called for a by-poll after the sitting MP and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi vacated the seat for Rae Bareli, the other seat he had won in UP during the Lok Sabha elections this year.
Priyanka Gandhi, representing the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) alliance, has emerged as a key candidate, with the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) playing a strong role within the coalition.
Congress faced controversy in the 2019 General Elections when IUML cadres waved the party’s green flags during Rahul Gandhi’s campaign in Wayanad. Some social media users misinterpreted these flags as being from Pakistan, causing a heated debate.
The Congress party had to clarify that the green flags belonged to their ally, the IUML, which uses a crescent moon and a star as its emblem.
In 2024, the absence of IUML’s green flags during Rahul Gandhi’s roadshow in Wayanad sparked another round of debate, with opposing political groups like CPI(M) highlighting this change.
A video in circulation showing a large group of people waving green flags has reignited the debate. In the video, the green flags seemingly outnumber the blue flags and intense sloganeering can be heard in Malayalam.
Reminding of this debate, an X user shared the 45-second video with the caption, “This is not Pakistan or Bangladesh but Wayanad in India where a rally has been taken out in support of Priyanka Gandhi!” (Translated from Hindi)
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Fact Check
NewsMeter found that the claim is false. The video shows a political rally in Kasaragod in 2019.
The sloganeering in Malayalam hinted that the video is from Kerala. We could hear the crowd chanting the names ‘Satheesh Chandran’, ‘Rahul Gandhi’ and ‘Unnithan’, and other words such as ‘Parliament’, ‘UDF’, ‘CPIM’, etc. as part of the sloganeering. This hinted that the video is from a political rally.
A keyword search led us to a YouTube video with the same visuals. It was titled, ‘IUML | 2019’ and uploaded on June 10, 2019. This indicated that the viral video was at least five years old. The green flags in the video are IUML flags confirming that the rally was taken out by the party.
Here’s a comparison of the IUML party flag and the flags seen in the rally.
Further, to determine the location of the video, we analysed the video for identifiable landmarks. The video showed a shop called ‘Aramana Silks’. We found the shop on Google Maps which was located in Kasaragod (near Mubarak Masjid, Old Bus Stand, MG Road, Kasaragod), approximately 200 km from Wayanad.
Here’s a comparison of the shop found on Google Maps and the one in the viral video.
Using the information gathered so far, we confirmed that the video shows a political rally by IUML in Kasaragod in June 2019. General elections in Kerala were held on April 23 and the results were announced on May 24. In Kasaragod PC (Parliamentary Constituency), Congress fielded Rajmohan Unnithan who won by a margin of 40,438 votes.
According to a report in The Hindu, Unnithan polled 4,74,961 votes while his CPI(M) rival KP Sathishchandran secured 4,34,523. In 2019, IUML was also part of the larger UDF-Congress alliance.
Although NewsMeter couldn’t determine the exact date of the political rally in 2019, we can conclude that the rally was not for Congress candidate Priyanka Gandhi in Wayanad. The video showed a rally held by IUML in Kasaragod in 2019 where Congress candidate Rajmohan Unnithan won that year’s MP elections with the support of the IUML.
