A widely circulated video features Bollywood actor Ashutosh Rana encouraging citizens to vote during elections. The accompanying claim suggests that the actor is urging people to vote for the BJP. In this article, we will fact-check the accuracy of this assertion.
Claim: A video showcases Bollywood actor Ashutosh Rana encouraging people to vote for the BJP.
Fact: The original video reveals that his appeal is aimed at encouraging people to vote in general and not in favour of any specific political party. The BJP’s symbol is digitally added to the video, alleging that he appealed to vote for BJP. Additionally, there are no reports of Ashutosh Rana endorsing the BJP in the recent Madhya Pradesh state assembly elections. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
The presently trending video does depict Bollywood actor Ashutosh Rana encouraging citizens to vote. However, the original video reveals that his appeal is about voting in general and not in favour of any specific political party.
Search on the actor’s social media profiles led us to the identical video on his Facebook account. However, unlike the viral video, this version lacks the BJP’s symbol or any mention of BJP in the video. This implies that the BJP’s symbol is digitally added to the video.
Additionally, there are no reports of Ashutosh Rana endorsing the BJP in the recent 2023 Madhya Pradesh state assembly elections, though he had a casual meeting with the BJP minister, earlier in 2022. According to news sources, Ashutosh was included in the list of star campaigners for the Congress party in 2003.
Although there were speculations in 2019 about Congress potentially fielding Ashutosh Rana from Madhya Pradesh, this did not materialize. In response to the 2019 rumours, Ashutosh addressed the speculations through a Facebook post, explicitly dismissing them.
To sum it up, actor Ashutosh Rana did not appeal to vote for BJP in this video.
