Multiple posts (here, here, and here) are going viral on social media platforms claiming that the Government of India is offering free electric bicycles to school-going children or students. Some posts (here, here, here, and here) also feature a video allegedly showing Prime Minister Modi announcing a free electric bicycle scheme for school-going children. In the video, PM Modi can be heard saying that, as the NDA has won the Bihar elections, every school-going child will be given a free electric bicycle to go to school. Through this article, let us fact-check the claim made in these posts.
Claim: The Government of India is offering free electric cycles to school-children or students.
Fact: Neither the Government of India nor any state government is offering a free electric cycle for school-going children or students. The video claiming that Prime Minister Modi announced a free electric bicycle scheme for students is fake and has been digitally altered. It is also important to note that no state government in India is providing free electric bicycles to school-going children or students. However, several state governments do offer free regular bicycles to students, particularly school-going girls studying in government schools. The Madhya Pradesh government is giving free electric scooters to meritorious Class 12 students from government schools. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
We conducted a relevant keyword search to verify whether the Government of India is offering free electric bicycles to school-going children or students. However, we did not find any credible media reports or official announcements supporting this claim. If the Government of India had indeed announced such a scheme, it would have been reported by multiple media outlets.
We also reviewed the Government of India’s MyScheme portal and the press releases issued by the Press Information Bureau to check whether any such scheme had been recently announced or launched. However, we found no related information supporting the claim.
To find more details about the viral video showing Prime Minister Modi announcing a free electric bicycle scheme for school-going children, we conducted a Google reverse image search using keyframes from the video. This search led us to the original video uploaded on the official YouTube channel of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) India on 24 February 2019, titled “PM Modi’s speech at the launch of PM Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana in Gorakhpur, UP.” We also found that this video was live-streamed by the official YouTube channels of the Parliament of India, the Government of Uttar Pradesh, All India Radio, and the Bharatiya Janata Party on the same date.
In this speech, Prime Minister Modi talks about farmers, the PM-KISAN scheme, and other agriculture-related initiatives. At no point in the speech does he mention any free electric cycle. The full English transcript of this speech, shared by the Press Information Bureau (PIB), can be seen here.
We then analysed the viral video using multiple AI voice-detection tools, including Resemble AI and Hiya. The results indicated that the audio in the viral video is likely AI-generated. Based on this information, it is evident that the viral video is fake and digitally altered. It was created by modifying the audio of the original footage.
Upon reviewing the accounts posting this claim (here, here, and here), we found that these accounts regularly share misinformation and AI-generated videos of Prime Minister Modi, falsely claiming that he announced several free schemes, including a free recharge scheme, among others.
It is important to note that no state government in India is offering free electric bicycles to school-going children or students. However, several state governments — including Assam, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, and Tamil Nadu — do provide free regular bicycles to students, particularly school-going girls in government schools (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). The Madhya Pradesh government is giving free electric scooters to meritorious Class 12 students from government schools.
To sum it up, neither the Government of India nor any state government is offering free electric cycles to students. The video claiming to show Prime Minister Modi announcing a free electric bicycle scheme for students is fake.
