A video (here, here, here and here) is going viral on social media featuring BJP MP Arun Govil making critical remarks such as, “Did their voters send them here for this? Such shameful behaviour, with no regard for the cost of Parliament or the country.” This clip has been combined with another video showing Prime Minister Narendra Modi on an aircraft, with the claim that Modi fled abroad as soon as the Parliament session began and that Arun Govil was angry about it. Let’s uncover the truth behind this video.
Claim: The viral video shows BJP MP Arun Govil criticising Prime Minister Modi for leaving the country at the start of the Parliament session.
Fact: Arun Govil was criticising the opposition’s protest in Parliament over the SIR in Bihar, not PM Modi’s foreign visit. Hence the claim is FALSE.
To verify the claim, we conducted a reverse image search on Google, which led us to an extended version of the video uploaded by ANI. In this clip, Arun Govil is seen responding to a media question about the opposition’s protest in Parliament. He then delivers the same remarks featured in the viral video. The video is captioned: “BJP MP Arun Govil says, ‘This is a very bad attitude of the opposition… they don’t care about how much it costs to run Parliament… the government has already said it is ready to discuss every issue, but the opposition doesn’t want to discuss, they just want to make noise which is very shameful.” This context indicates that his comments were directed at the opposition, not at Prime Minister Modi.
Further research led us to several news videos (here and here) showing that Arun Govil was responding to questions about the protest by the INDIA bloc leaders — including Lok Sabha LoP Rahul Gandhi, Akhilesh Yadav, and Derek O’Brien — in Parliament against the Election Commission’s SIR (Special Intensive Revision) in Bihar. In his response, he made the same remarks seen in the viral clip. This clearly confirms that BJP MP Arun Govil’s comments were not about Prime Minister Modi’s foreign visit during the monsoon session, but were instead directed at the opposition’s protest in Parliament.
To sum up, the video of MP Arun Govil targeting the opposition’s protest in Parliament is falsely shared as his criticism of PM Modi’s foreign visit during the Monsoon Session.
