Clipped video of Rahul Gandhi’s old speech is falsely linked to the protests against the Agnipath scheme

• Dilip Kumar Sripada

A video is being shared on social media claiming it as visuals of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi making provocative statements while predicting the violence at the protests against the Agnipath scheme. Sharing the video, the post claims that Congress and all other opposition parties have planned to incite violence during the Agnipath protests. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.

Claim: Video of Rahul Gandhi predicting violence at the protests against the Agnipath scheme.

Fact: The post shared a clipped video of Rahul Gandhi’s speech at the Nav Sankalp Chintan Shivir meeting held in Udaipur on 15 May 2022. Rahul Gandhi made these comments accusing the BJP government of suppressing government institutions and ending conversations with states, religions, and castes in the country. These statements from Rahul Gandhi have nothing to do with the Agnipath scheme that was cleared by the Cabinet Committee of Security on 14 June 2022. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.

When we searched for the details of this video using relevant keywords on the internet, we found that the video shows a clip from Rahul Gandhi’s speech at the Nav Sankalp Chintan Shivir meeting held in Rajasthan’s Udaipur on 15 May 2022. The full video of Rahul Gandhi’s speech at this meeting was published on the official YouTube channel of Rahul Gandhi.

From 32:22 minutes of the video, we could notice the same visuals as shared in the post. While explaining his battle against the BJP policies, Rahul Gandhi said, “The fight has just started. And in the coming days, you will see, there will be a fire in India. The more they suppress the government institutions in the country, as much as they end healthy conversations between states, religions and castes, the fire will ignite with much more force. And the job of the Congress party is to restart these conversations and to protect the government institutions” (when translated from Hindi to English). Rahul Gandhi made these comments accusing the BJP government of suppressing government institutions and end conversations with states, religions, and castes in the country.  Rahul Gandhi did not mention anything about the Agnipath protests that took place a month after the Nav Sankalp Chintan Shivir meeting in Udaipur.

On 14 June 2022, the Cabinet Committee of Security cleared the Agnipath scheme for recruitment in the armed forces. Following the announcement of the Agnipath scheme, multiple states have witnessed protests against the scheme. Congress expressed its solidarity towards the protests against the Agnipath scheme and held a ‘Satyagraha’ at the Jantar Mantar in Delhi on 19 June 2022. Lately, Rahul Gandhi had made multiple tweets and public statements opposing the Agnipath scheme announced by the Government of India.

To sum it up, a clipped video of Rahul Gandhi’s old speech at the Nav Sankalp Chintan Shivir was falsely linked to the protests against the Agnipath scheme.