In the 2024 Lok Sabha General Election, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi contested and won from both Wayanad and Rae Bareli. He resigned as the MP for Wayanad in June 2024, resulting in the vacancy of the Wayanad seat. Recently, on 15 October 2024, the Election Commission of India (ECI) released notification for the Maharashtra and Jharkhand assembly elections, along with a bye-election schedule for 48 vacant assembly constituencies and 2 parliamentary constituencies across the country, including the bye-election for the Wayanad parliamentary seat. On 23 October 2024, Priyanka Gandhi filed her nomination as the Congress candidate for the Wayanad bye-election. On this occasion, Congress and its allies organized a large rally and roadshow in Wayanad. In this context, a video has been widely shared across social media platforms, claiming that Islamic/Pakistani flags were waved at Priyanka Gandhi’s nomination rally in Wayanad (here, here, here, and here). Through this article, let’s fact-check the claims made in the post.
Claim: Video shows Islamic/Pakistani flags being raised at Priyanka Gandhi’s nomination rally in Wayanad on 23 October 2024.
Fact: This viral video is not related to Priyanka Gandhi’s nomination rally in Wayanad on 23 October 2024. Instead, it is from one of Rajmohan Unnithan’s 2019 election campaigns in Kasargod. Rajmohan Unnithan, the sitting Congress MP from Kasargod, won the parliamentary seat in 2019 as well. The flags seen in the video are neither Pakistani national flags nor Islamic flags; they are the flags of the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) party. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
To verify the details of this viral video, we conducted a Google reverse image search using keyframes from the video. This search led us to the same video (archived) uploaded on YouTube by an unverified user on 10 June 2019. The description of the video states that it is related to an IUML rally held in 2019. Since the video predates Priyanka Gandhi’s nomination rally in Wayanad on 23 October 2024, we can conclude that this video is not related to her nomination rally.
Upon closer observation of the flags displayed in the viral video, we found that they were neither the Pakistani national flag nor Islamic flags, but the official flag of the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), a political party primarily based in Kerala. The IUML is a Kerala-based party and a member of the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF). At the national level, it is part of the I.N.D.I.A bloc. A comparison between the flags seen in the viral video and the IUML party flag is shown below.
In this viral video, we can hear the slogans in Malayalam “ee kolam Satish Chandran Veettil Iriktte… Parliamentil Unnithan Vijayichu Pokatte” (Let Satish Chandran sit at home this year; Unnithan should win and go to Parliament). Based on this, we conducted a relevant keyword search on Google and found that Rajmohan Unnithan is the Lok Sabha MP from Kasargod, who won both the 2019 and 2024 Lok Sabha General Elections from the Kasargod constituency (here, here). In the 2019 general election, Rajmohan Unnithan contested as the Congress candidate in Kasargod and defeated the Communist Party of India (Marxist) candidate K.P. Satish Chandran. This confirms that the video is related to the Kasargod Lok Sabha constituency and dates back to 2019.
Furthermore, we noticed a shop signboard displaying “Aramana Silks” in the viral video. Using this as a cue, we geolocated the “Aramana Silks” shop on Google Maps, situated on MG Road in Kasaragod. Based on all this information, we can conclude that the viral video dates back to 2019 and is related to Rajmohan Unnithan’s 2019 election campaign, who contested as the Congress candidate in the Kasargod Lok Sabha General Elections. Videos related to Priyanka Gandhi’s nomination rally in Wayanad held on 23 October 2024, can be seen here and here.
Factly previously fact-checked the same video when it went viral, claiming that Pakistani flags were waved at Rahul Gandhi’s rally in Wayanad.
To sum it up, this viral video is not related to Priyanka Gandhi’s nomination rally in Wayanad on 23 October 2024. The video dates back to 2019, and the flags seen in it are those of the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) party.
