A video(here, here and here) of Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati, in which she appears to be appealing to the voters to cast their votes for the Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP) in return for the free ration provided by Narendra Modi, is doing the rounds on social media. We fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: The video shows BSP president Mayawati appealing to the voters to vote for the BJP.
Fact: This is a clipped video from Mayawati’s speech, which she delivered at a public meeting in Agra on 4 May 2024. In her original speech, Mayawati quoted the people from RSS and BJP, who she claims are asking for votes in the name of free ration provided by the BJP. This small portion of her speech was clipped out of context and shared in the form of the viral video. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
To check the veracity of the viral claim, we searched the internet with relevant keywords to find the original video in which Mayawati spoke about voting for BJP. This search led us to the original full-length speech uploaded on the Bahujan Samaj Party YouTube channel and on few other news channels’ YouTube handles (here and here).
You can see the portion of her speech in the viral video from 26:12 . Although these words were spoken by her, she said this in a context, which she provides from 25:06 (archive link). Here, she explains how the free rations provided by the central government to the poor is not going to improve their lives. She then proceeds to say in Hindi, which translates to, ‘You all know that when the assembly elections were held here, during the assembly elections and also now during the Lok Sabha elections all around the country, the BJP and RSS people have taken it as a mission to mislead the voters in the name of the ration given by the central government to the poor and downtrodden.’
She then says that the BJP and RSS people are moving about in villages and saying that ‘Narendra Modi ji gave you free ration, which is why you have a huge Karz(which is why you are indebted to him), so you repay it by voting for BJP.’
She further explains that the ration given by the BJP government to the poor was not given out of their pockets but from the tax paid by the people to the Uttar Pradesh government and the central government. The ANI, Times of India, and Hindustan Times reported this, which you can see here, here and here.
The context in which she spoke was removed, and a video was made to look as if Mayawati was appealing to the voters to cast their vote for Narendra Modi and the BJP.
To sum up, the viral video of Mayawati asking people to vote for BJP is clipped.
