On 15 October 2024, the Election Commission of India (ECI) released a 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 Lok Sabha seat. On 23 October 2024, Priyanka Gandhi filed her nomination as the Congress candidate for the Wayanad bye-election. The bye-election for the Wayanad Lok Sabha seat is scheduled for 13 November 2024, and Priyanka Gandhi’s election campaign in Wayanad is ongoing (here, here). In this context, a video showing a massive crowd gathered near a convoy of cars is going viral on social media platforms, claiming to depict Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s election campaign rally in Wayanad, Kerala (here, here, here, and here). This article aims to fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Video shows a massive crowd gathering at Priyanka Gandhi’s recent election campaign in the Wayanad parliamentary constituency, Kerala.
Fact: This viral video dates back to May 2024 and is unrelated to Priyanka Gandhi’s recent election campaign in the Wayanad parliamentary constituency. The video actually shows footage from a rally held by Priyanka Gandhi in Nandurbar, Maharashtra, on 11 May 2024 during the 2024 Lok Sabha general elections. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
To gather more details about the viral video, we conducted a Google reverse image search using keyframes from the video. This search led us to a video (archived here) uploaded on the Facebook page of the Marathi news outlet Samachar First. This video was shared on 11 May 2024, with a caption stating that it shows Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s rally in Maharashtra’s Nandurbar. This makes it clear that the video is not related to Priyanka Gandhi’s recent election campaign in Wayanad, as it predates the notification for the bye-election of the Wayanad parliamentary seat.
Furthermore, we found that a similar video was uploaded on Priyanka Gandhi’s official Instagram page (archived here) on 11 May 2024, which also states that the video is from Nandurbar, Maharashtra. The video also included a location tag indicating Nandurbar, Maharashtra. Similar video clips were shared on the official Facebook page and YouTube channel of the Indian Youth Congress on 11 May 2024. The descriptions of these videos also confirmed that the visuals were from Nandurbar in Maharashtra.
According to reports (here, here, and here), Priyanka Gandhi addressed a rally in Nandurbar, Maharashtra, in May 2024 while campaigning for the 2024 Lok Sabha General Elections. A report by the Marathi outlet Saam TV featured similar visuals of Priyanka Gandhi waving at the crowd, as seen in the viral video. Videos related to Priyanka Gandhi’s recent election campaign in the Wayanad bye-election can be seen here and here.
Factly had earlier debunked a video that was falsely linked to the 2024 Wayanad bye-elections, the fact-check of which can be read here.
To sum up, an old video of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s rally from the 2024 Lok Sabha general elections in Maharashtra has been falsely shared as footage from one of her election rallies in Wayanad during the bye-elections in November 2024.
