The results of the Bihar Assembly elections were declared on 14 November 2025. In this election, the BJP-led NDA alliance secured 202 of the 243 seats. Following the results, opposition parties raised concerns about the Election Commission’s impartiality, alleging that it favoured the BJP and enabled vote theft (here and here).
Amid this, a video is being widely shared on social media (here, here, here and here) showing a large crowd carrying torches while marching through a street. It is being claimed that this is a massive protest in Bihar against vote theft following the announcement of the election results. Let’s find out the truth behind this claim.
Claim: The viral video shows people in Bihar holding a torchlight procession to protest vote theft after the 2025 election results.
Fact: The video is not from Bihar. It shows a torchlight rally held on 25 September 2025 in Jaipur, organised by supporters of youth leader Naresh Meena to demand justice for children who died in the Jhalawar school collapse. No credible reports indicate any such torch procession in Bihar. Hence the claim is FALSE
To verify the claim, we conducted a reverse image search of keyframes from the viral video. This led us to multiple social media posts (here, here, and here) featuring the same visuals, uploaded in September 2025, well before the Bihar election results were announced. According to these posts, the video shows a youth demonstration in Jaipur, organised to demand justice for the families of children who died in the Jhalawar school tragedy. The footage is from a massive torchlight rally held from Triveni to Gurjar Ki Thadi.
Taking cues from these social media posts, we searched relevant keywords on Google and found multiple media reports (here, here, and here) covering the same procession. According to these reports, the torchlight march was organised on 25 September 2025 in Jaipur by supporters of Rajasthan youth leader Naresh Meena, who was on a 14-day hunger strike demanding justice for the families of children who died in the Piplodi school collapse in Jhalawar, where seven children lost their lives in July 2025. The procession began at Triveni Nagar Square and ended at Gurjar Ki Thadi, with participation from people across communities.
We also found a live video of the torchlight march streamed on Naresh Meena’s Facebook page on 25 September 2025, which matches the location seen in the viral video. The same live stream was shared by Punjab Kesari Rajasthan on its Facebook page on 26 September 2025.
Using Google Street View, we matched the procession’s location to 11 Gopalpura bypass, Jaipur, Rajasthan, and identified Kamla Towers and the Unacademy centre beside it in the viral video, confirming that the footage is indeed from Jaipur.
Moreover, this same video had previously gone viral on social media with the claim that people were chanting “UP police, use your batons” during the ‘I Love Muhammad’ protest in Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh. Factly had debunked that claim at the time, and the UP Police had also issued a clarification stating that the viral video was not from Bareilly but from Jaipur.
Additionally, we checked on Google for any torchlight procession in Bihar related to alleged vote theft, but found no such reports. All available evidence clearly shows that the viral video has no connection to Bihar.
To sum up, an unrelated torchlight procession video from Rajasthan is being falsely shared as a protest against vote theft in Bihar.
