Old video of Bihar Migrant workers abusing Nitish Kumar is shared in the context of change in his political alliance

• Harshavardhan Konda

On 9 August 2022, JD(U) leader Nitish Kumar resigned as Chief Minister of Bihar and terminated his party’s alliance with the BJP, announcing that his party had re-joined the Mahagathbandhan and took the oath as Chief Minister of Bihar for the eighth time on 10 August 2022. In this context, a video of group of people abusing Nitish Kumar is being widely shared on social media. Let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.

Claim: A group of people abusing Nitish Kumar after he ended alliance with NDA & joined hands with Mahagatbandhan of RJD & Congress.

Fact: This video has been circulating on social media since April 2020. The earliest video we found on Facebook was posted on 30 April 2020. In this video, a group of Bihari migrant workers working in Tamil Nadu can be seen appealing to Nitish Kumar to bring them back to their homes during first COVID-19 lockdown. They can also be seen abusing him with cuss words. Hence, the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.

We searched on the internet with relevant keywords and found a full-length video on Facebook. This video was posted on 30 April 2020. The viral video is taken from the last few seconds of this video.

According to this video, the group of people claimed to be migrant workers from Bihar working in Tamil Nadu. They were stuck in Tamil Nadu and were unable to go back Bihar because of lockdown imposed by the Government to contain the spread of COVID-19. Through this video, they appealed to the Bihar CM Nitish Kumar to bring them back home. They can also be seen hurling abuses against him. Several other users posted the same video. They can be seen here and here

Even though we couldn’t verify the identities of the persons and the exact date, location of the incident, from the above evidence, we can conclude that this video is at least 2 years old and is not related to recent developments in Bihar politics.

To sum it up, an old video of Bihari migrant workers abusing Nitish Kumar for not helping them to get back to home during first COVID-19 lockdown is being shared as recent one.