Fact Check: Video of Rahul Gandhi asking for 'removal of Tricolour' during BJNY is clipped

Hyderabad: A video comparing prime minister Narendra Modi and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is going viral. The video’s first clip shows Modi picking up a small Indian flag from the floor of a stage and putting it in his pocket while the second clip reportedly shows Gandhi asking for the Indian flag to be removed during a public rally.

“The difference is clear…” captioned the video an Instagram user who shared the video.

BJP’s Amit Malviya shared the clip of Rahul Gandhi, with the caption, “Rahul Gandhi asks India’s flag to be taken down…This is straight out of George Soros’s rule book, where he asks his protégée to insult and demean everything Indian. (sic)”

Fact Check

NewsMeter found that the video is clipped and is being shared with the context missing.

We browsed through the Congress YouTube channel and came across a video live-streamed on March 13, titled ‘#BharatJodoNyayYatra resumes from Dondaicha, Maharashtra.’

After watching the full video, we found that Gandhi did not ask for the flag to be removed from the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra. He had asked for the stick holding the flag to demonstrate how Union home minister Amit Shah misuses the Central agencies against the Opposition.

At around 9:50-minute timestamp, Gandhi calls a man named Santosh Jaiswal Patil from the crowd from his vehicle and uses him as a prop to demonstrate how Central agencies like the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) are being misused by the ruling party.

Using Patil as a prop, he first shows how people are being distracted by talk of Pakistan and China. Further, he alleges that, while people are distracted, ‘Adani robs your pocket, and then Amit Shah uses the stick to misuse Central agencies.’

During this demonstration, at the 11.12-minute timestamp, Gandhi asks for a stick from the crowd. While Congress supporters struggle to remove one of the flags from a stick, Gandhi settles for a small stick from the crowd. The viral video clip does not show the portions where Gandhi talks about Modi, Adani and Shah using the stick.

Hence, we conclude that the viral video of Rahul Gandhi asking to remove the flag for the stick is clipped and is being shared with a missing context to mislead the people.