A video of burka-clad women waiting in a long line allegedly to withdraw the 8500 rupees under the Congress’s ‘Mahalakshmi Scheme’ is doing the rounds on social media. This scheme was part of the poll promises made by the Congress party. The video is being shared amid the news reports about women lining up at Congress party offices about this scheme. We fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: This video shows Muslim women waiting in line for the ‘Mahalakshmi Scheme’ money, as promised by the Congress party in 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Fact: This video is from 2020 that shows women in Muzaffarnagar, UP, waiting in a queue outside the Bank of Baroda to withdraw money from their ‘Jan-Dhan’ accounts. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
To check the veracity of the viral claim, we performed a reverse image search on a few of the video’s keyframes. This search led us to a 2020 news report published by ‘News18 India.’ This incident happened in Uttar Pradesh’s Muzaffarnagar.
As per new reports, this video was recorded outside the Bank of Baroda branch in Gandhi Colony, Muzaffarnagar, when women flocked to the bank to withdraw money they received in their ‘Jan-Dhan’ accounts.
This was reported to have happened due to a rumour that the 500 rupees credited by the government would be reversed. This led to confusion among the women, and they rushed to banks to withdraw this amount.
Later, the Lead District Manager(LDM) had to intervene and clear the confusion among the account holders.
Although there are recent news reports about women lining up at congress party offices about the ‘Mahalakshmi Scheme’ amount, this video has nothing to do with that. Additionally, we also debunked the claim that a woman died of heat stroke after standing in a queue in front of the Congress office in Amethi.
To sum up, an old and unrelated video is falsely being shared as visuals of women waiting in a long line to withdraw their ‘Mahalakshmi Scheme’ amount.
