Ahead of the 2024 General Elections, a video is being shared on social media (here, here, here) with a claim that Sujata Mondal, a TMC candidate from Bishnupur, was chased away by voters from Arambagh after she allegedly threatened them to vote for TMC. Let’s verify the authenticity of the claim through this article.
Claim: Visuals of TMC candidate from Bishnupur, Sujata Mondal being chased away by Arambagh voters ahead of 2024 General Elections.
Fact: The incident in the video is not a recent one, it happened in 2021. During the 2021 West Bengal Assembly Elections, Sujata Mondal, a Trinamool candidate from Arambagh was chased out of a voting booth in the Arandi area of the constituency. While Sujata Mondal claimed that the BJP workers attacked her, the villagers alleged that the candidate misbehaved with them. Hence, the claim made in the post is Misleading.
A reverse image search of the keyframes from the viral video led us to multiple news articles (here and here) from 2021 that have shared similar visuals. A search on YouTube using specific keywords led us to the original version of the viral video published by ‘Anandabazar Patrika’ on 6 Apr 2021.
As per these reports, Sujata Mondal, a Trinamool candidate from Arambagh, was chased out of a voting booth in the Arandi area of the constituency during the West Bengal Assembly Elections in 2021. While Sujata Mondal had accused the opposition BJP party of creating chaos and threatening TMC supporters by beating them, the BJP has refuted the claim. However, people from the Arandi village claimed that Sujata Mondal had barged into their homes and behaved inappropriately. Sujata also alleged that there was a voting discrepancy at poll booth 45, where votes intended for TMC went to BJP.
Sujata Mondal lost the Arambagh seat in the 2021 Assembly elections to Madhusudan Bag of BJP. She is now contesting on a TMC ticket in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections against her former husband, Saumitra Khan, who is a BJP MP, in Bishnupur.
To sum up, a 2021 video of TMC leader Sujata Mondal being chased by Arambagh voters resurfaced ahead of the 2024 General Elections.
