A video is being shared on social media claiming it as the recent visuals of Union Minister Smriti Irani praising PM Narendra Modi for increasing fuel prices in the country. This purported video of Smriti Irani shows her saying that Narendra Modi has helped the poor and given a masterstroke to the rich by increasing fuel prices. In the wake of the recent continuous rise in fuel prices, this video is going viral on social media. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Video of Smriti Irani praising Narendra Modi for increasing fuel prices in the country.
Fact: The viral video is an edited one. The original video shows Smriti Irani accusing Rahul Gandhi of playing spiteful and vengeful politics to create a divide between North and South people in the country. Smriti Irani made these comments in February 2021, in the backdrop of Rahul Gandhi’s statement during a rally in Kerala that he was used to a different type of politics in North India. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
When you observe the video carefully, you could see a lip-sync mismatch in the video. When we searched to check whether Smriti Irani had recently made any such statement praising Narendra Modi for increasing the fuel prices, we could not find a single news report informing such information on the internet.
On reverse image search of the screenshots in the video, a video with similar visuals was found tweeted by ‘ANI’ on 24 February 2021. The original video shows Smriti Irani lashing out at Rahul Gandhi for playing spiteful and vengeful politics to create a divide between North and South people in the country. In the original video, Smriti Irani spoke to the interviewer in English, not in Hindi.
Smriti Irani had reportedly made these comments in the backdrop of Rahul Gandhi’s statement during a rally in Kerala. In February 2021, while addressing the ‘Aishwarya Yatra’ rally in Kerala, Rahul Gandhi said he was used to a different type of Politics in North India and that coming to Kerala was very refreshing as people in South India are interested in issues. From all these pieces of evidence, it can be concluded that the post shared a doctored video created by altering the audio of another person.
To sum it up, an edited video falsely shared as the recent visuals of Smriti Irani praising Narendra Modi for rising fuel prices in the country.
