A video (here, here and here) is making rounds on social media, which allegedly shows Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan campaigning for the Congress Party for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. We fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: The video shows Shah Rukh Khan campaigning for the Congress Party in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Fact: The person seen in the video is Shah Rukh Khan’s lookalike, Ibrahim Qadri. He campaigned for Congress candidate Praniti Shinde in Solapur, Maharashtra. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
To verify the authenticity of the viral claim, we initially searched for news reports about this incident using relevant keywords. This search did not provide any reliable news reports that supported the assertion that Shah Rukh Khan campaigned for the Congress party.
However, during our search, we found numerous news reports (here, here here, and here) indicating that Ibrahim Qadri, a doppelgänger of Shah Rukh Khan, had campaigned for Congress party leader Praniti Shinde in Solapur, Maharashtra.
Praniti is the sitting MLA of Solapur City Central. Ibrahim Qadri, who resembles Shah Rukh Khan, has a following of approximately 1.6 million on Instagram. In one of his Instagram posts, he can be seen standing atop a campaign vehicle that aligns with the one seen in the viral video.
Reportedly, the BJP took objection to the use of Shah Rukh Khan’s lookalike in the election campaign and labelled it a scam, as reported by the Hindustan Times.
To sum up, the person seen campaigning for the Congress Party in the viral video is not Shah Rukh Khan but his lookalike, Ibrahim Qadri.
