In the wake of the upcoming 2022 elections in UP, a video through a post is being widely shared on social media claiming that Mayawati said, “Do not vote for radicals, rather transfer your vote to BJP”. Let us fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Recent video where Mayawati said, “Do not vote for radicals, rather transfer your vote to BJP”.
Fact: The video is taken from a press conference by Mayawati after the local body elections in UP in 2006. The video is missing context. To defeat a ‘fundamentalist’ Muslim leader who was previously in her party and fielded his wife in Meerut, Mayawati said that, as it turned into a Hindu-Muslim tussle, she asked her voters to transfer their votes to BJP. After the 2006 local body elections in Uttar Pradesh, the Bahujan Samaj Party leader Mayawati held a press conference and spoke about the BSP’s tactical support to BJP and Congress, against the Samajwadi Party. Hence, the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
When reverse image search is done on the screenshots of the video, a similar video was found uploaded on YouTube in 2017. According to the title of the video, this YouTube video is from 10 November 2006, where Mayawati is seen telling her party workers to give their vote for BJP. In the full video, Mayawati spoke about defeating a ‘fundamentalist’ Muslim leader who was previously in her party and fielded his wife in Meerut. She said that as the seat turned into a Hindu-Muslim tussle, she asked her voters to transfer their votes to BJP.
After the 2006 local body elections in Uttar Pradesh, the Bahujan Samaj Party leader Mayawati held a press conference and spoke about the BSP’s tactical support to BJP and Congress, against the Samajwadi Party. Mayawati referred to Muslims as ‘preferring fundamentalists.’ Her remarks later in the day triggered protests in UP. In a second press conference on the same day, Mayawati said, ‘Some channels have shown that I have called the Muslims fundamentalists. Such a twist to my statement is wrong.’ And she said that she never called Muslims fundamentalists.
To sum it up, the 2006 video about Mayawati’s support to BJP to defeat a ‘Fundamentalist’ Muslim leader is shared as recent.
