A video going viral on social media (here, here, and here) features actor Pankaj Tripathi portraying a peanut seller who is allegedly mocking the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP). The video shows him criticising their campaign message promising development, stating that despite being a peanut seller, he’s not foolish enough to believe in such empty promises. He warns others not to be tempted by the BJP’s offers, implying that voting for them leads to the misuse of government funds. Let’s verify the truth behind the video in this article.
Claim: A video shows actor Pankaj Tripathi portraying a peanut seller who mocking the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP).
Fact: The viral video is an edited version of an ad campaign by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), where actor Pankaj Tripathi was appointed as its “UPI Safety Ambassador.” In the original ad, when Tripathi shows his phone screen, the message displayed says, “Winner. Congrats! You have won a lottery of Rs 25,00,000! To claim your prize, click here,” followed by a hyperlink. In the viral video, this message was replaced with the BJP’s symbol, and the text “Vote for BJP” was added. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
To verify the claim we conducted a reverse image search of the keyframes from the viral video which led us to an Instagram post (archive) on the UPI Chalega Instagram handle, dated 23 September 2024, featuring the same video of actor Pankaj Tripathi. In the video, Tripathi talks about UPI fraud but does not mention the Bhartiya Janata Party anywhere.
We noticed that when Pankaj Tripathi shows his phone screen, the photo on the phone displays a message saying, “Winner. Congrats! You have won a lottery of Rs 25,00,000! To claim your prize, click here,” followed by a hyperlink. In the viral video, this was replaced with the BJP’s symbol, and the text, “Vote for BJP.” was added. A comparison between the two can be seen below.
In November 2023 (archive), the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) appointed actor Pankaj Tripathi as its “UPI Safety Ambassador.” In September 2024, UPI launched an ad campaign (archive) called “Main Moorkh Nahi Hoon,” featuring Tripathi as a peanut seller who receives a fraudulent lottery message to raise awareness about digital payment scams.
We also found NPCI’s 06 November 2024 press release that announced the launch of a UPI Safety Awareness Campaign, with Tripathi starring in six ads highlighting common scam tactics. So far, three ads have been released, featuring Tripathi as a peanut seller, betel seller, and business executive (here, here, and here).
To sum up, a digitally edited video of a UPI advertisement featuring Pankaj Tripathi is falsely shared as him mocking BJP
