Recently, during the 2024 winter session of Parliament on 17 December 2024, Home Minister Amit Shah, while speaking in the Rajya Sabha and criticising the Congress, made a statement claiming that invoking Ambedkar’s name has become a ‘fashion’ for the opposition (here). Several opposition parties, including the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), have demanded that Home Minister Amit Shah apologise for his remarks about Dr B.R. Ambedkar and resign (here, here, here). In this context, a video clip of former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal is being widely shared on social media platforms with the claim that he said BR Ambedkar was drunk while drafting the Constitution of India (here, here, here, and here). In the viral clip, Arvind Kejriwal can be heard saying in Hindi: “We were sitting… someone said whoever wrote the Constitution must have been drunk while doing it.” Through this article, we fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Video shows Arvind Kejriwal saying that Dr B.R. Ambedkar was drunk while drafting the constitution of India.
Fact: This viral video has been clipped and shared out of context. It dates back to 2012 and shows a speech made by Kejriwal on 25 November 2012 at Raj Ghat in New Delhi. In this speech, Kejriwal was mocking the authors of the Congress constitution, referring to a clause that once required abstinence from alcohol as a condition for Congress party membership. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
If Arvind Kejriwal had made such controversial remarks about Ambedkar, they would have made headlines. However, no such reports were found.
We examined several viral posts featuring this viral video to gather more details. We found that a user on X (formerly Twitter), while responding to one of the viral posts, shared a 22-second-long video and claimed that the viral video was fake and edited out of context. In this 22-second clip, Kejriwal can be heard saying in Hindi: “ this time I have read the constitutions of all political parties. The Congress constitution states that no Congress member will drink alcohol. We were sitting, and someone said whoever wrote the constitution must have written it after drinking (alcohol).” There is no reference to Dr Ambedkar or the Indian Constitution in the video.
The user also shared a YouTube link to the full video in his next tweet. This link led us to the 17-minute-long original video uploaded to the official YouTube channel of the Aam Aadmi Party on 03 December 2012. According to the video’s description, Kejriwal delivered this speech at Raj Ghat in New Delhi on 25 November 2012. In this video, Kejriwal, while addressing a crowd, outlined the key points of the Aam Aadmi Party’s internal constitution and criticised the Congress Party for not “following” its own constitution. At the timestamp 04:35, Kejriwal said: “I have read the constitutions of all political parties. The constitution of the Congress Party says that no Congress worker will drink alcohol… We were sitting, and someone said whoever wrote the constitution must have written it after drinking alcohol” (translated from Hindi to English). This clarifies that a portion of his speech was taken out of context and made viral to falsely imply that he was disrespecting the Indian Constitution and its authors.
We also reviewed the Constitution and Rules of the Indian National Congress on the party’s official website. On page 72, in the membership enrolment/renewal form, we found that applicants are required to declare that they will abstain from alcohol and intoxicating drugs. However, reports (here, here, and here) indicate that in February 2023, the Congress Party revised its constitution, removing the clause that required abstinence from alcohol as a condition for membership and making wearing Khadi optional.
To sum it up, an old video of Arvind Kejriwal mocking the writers of the Congress constitution has been clipped to falsely claim that Kejriwal said BR Ambedkar was drunk while writing the Constitution of India.
