A video showing multiple clips of Rahul Gandhi’s speeches at different rallies is being shared on social media claiming that these are funny visuals of Rahul Gandhi making absurd statements about the fertility rate in UP and unemployment with a complete lack of knowledge about the issues. The first video clip shows Rahul Gandhi saying- “There are some women in Uttar Pradesh who give birth to a child every week, and some who give birth to 52 children in a year“. The other video clip shows Rahul Gandhi stating unemployment as the reason for eagles flying in the respective public rally surroundings. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Video clips showing Rahul Gandhi’s statements about the fertility rate in Uttar Pradesh and about the unemployment of birds.
Fact: Both video clips shared in the post are edited. The first video clip was created by merging audio and video clips of Rahul Gandhi’s speeches from two different rallies held in West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh. The other video clip shared in the post was also created by clipping Rahul Gandhi’s statement about the government turning a blind eye to keeping municipalities clean where common people live but are waiving debts of billionaires like Anil Ambani and Adani using people’s money. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
The video shared in the post contains two video clips of Rahul Gandhi’s speeches at two different rallies. Let’s find the details of each video clip one by one.
Video clip 1:
On reverse image search of the video shared in the post and by searching with relevant keywords on the internet, a video showing the same visuals was found published by the Indian National Congress on 15 April 2021. The video shows Rahul Gandhi’s speech at a public meeting in Goalpokhar ahead of the 2021 West Bengal Elections. While speaking about Uttar Pradesh, Rahul Gandhi said that during COVID-19, hospitals were filled with dead bodies and the government has no idea about it. Rahul Gandhi during his speech spoke about the adverse effects of demonetization and failure in handling COVID-19. Rahul Gandhi during his speech did not speak anything about the fertility rate in Uttar Pradesh.
When we searched for further sources, we found that the audio in the video clip was taken from Rahul Gandhi’s old speech at a rally in Uttar Pradesh’s Phoolpur in 2011. Speaking about the misuse of the Janani Suraksha Yojana in Uttar Pradesh, Rahul Gandhi said that Congress through an RTI reply learned that many women in the state claim to have given birth multiple times to get cash assistance. The portion where Rahul Gandhi talks about women who make false claims for obtaining Janani Suraksha Yojana benefits was cropped out and attached to the video shared in the post.
Video clip 2:
On reverse image search and by searching with relevant keywords on the internet, a video showing the same visuals was found published on the official YouTube channel of the Indian National Congress (INC) on 05 February 2020. Alleging that the Narendra Modi government had waived off 3 lakh 50 thousand crores of Anil Ambani and Adani, from 9:36 minutes of the video, Rahul Gandhi said, “Say me why these eagles were flying here. What these eagles were doing here? Can anyone say how much crores it will cost to remove this dirt? A 10-year-old girl here says 5 crores, 10 crores. Okay, let us think it will cost 50 crores. A few days ago, Narendra Modi waived off One Lakh 30 thousand crores tax for India’s richest businessmen. You people live in the dirt. And those rich men live in luxurious buildings and travel in aeroplanes using your money.” Rahul Gandhi never stated anything about unemployment while talking about eagles or dirt at the rally in Delhi’s Kondli.
To sum it up, edited video clips were shared as the visuals of Rahul Gandhi’s absurd statements about the fertility rate in Uttar Pradesh and unemployment.
