A video is being shared on social media claiming it as visuals of Bollywood actor Alia Bhatt endorsing Congress National General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi’s new manifesto promise to distribute free scooters to girls in UP. This video shows Alia Bhat stating, “प्रियंका दीदी ने स्कूटी देने का वाधा किया ह। कुछ दिन में हम भी अपनी स्कूटी चलाएंगे” (when translated to English: Priyanka sister promised us free scooty. In a few days, I will also ride my own scooty). On 21 October 2021, Priyanka Gandhi announced the Congress Party manifesto for the upcoming Uttar Pradesh Assembly Elections 2022. As part of the election manifesto, Priyanka Gandhi promised free smartphones and electric scooters to girls. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Video of Alia Bhatt endorsing Priyanka Gandhi’s manifesto promise to distribute free scooters to girls in UP.
Fact: The video shows an edited version of the ‘Hero Pleasure Plus’ advertisement that was made in 2019. In the original video, Alia Bhatt explained the advanced features of the new Hero Pleasure Plus scooter. This video was created by editing the audio clip of the original Hero Pleasure Plus advertisement. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE
On observing carefully, we could observe that there is no lip-sync in the viral video. On reverse image search of the screenshots in the video, it is found out that the video shared in the post shows the ‘Hero Pleasure Plus’ advertisement that was released in 2019. A video with similar visuals was published on the ‘Hero Motor Corporation Limited’ official YouTube channel on 16 August 2019. In the original advertisement video, Alia Bhatt explained the new advanced features of the Hero Pleasure Plus scooter. Alia Bhatt never mentioned anything about Priyanka Gandhi or any free scooty scheme in the original advertisement video.
‘Hero Motor Corporation Limited’ had tweeted the same advertisement video on 27 August 2019. The video shared in the post was created by editing the audio clip of this original advertisement. On the posted video, we could see a ‘आ रही है कांग्रेस’ logo on the top-right side of the video. It is found out that a Facebook page named ‘आ रही है कांग्रेस’ had first published this edited version of the video on 22 October 2021.
To sum it up, an edited version of the ‘Hero Pleasure Plus 2019’ advertisement video is falsely shared as Alia Bhatt endorsing Priyanka Gandhi’s manifesto promise of distributing free electric scooters to girls in UP.