Amidst ongoing farmer protests at the Punjab-Haryana border, candidates from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Jannayak Janta Party (JJP) in Haryana are encountering significant resistance from farmers’ organizations during their election campaigns for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. In this context, a video of a group of people burning the party flags of BJP is being shared on social media (here, here, and here) claiming that ‘yesterday (April 2024) in Ellenabad, farmers took down BJP’s campaign vehicle and burnt their flags.’ Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Farmers took down BJP campaign vehicles and burnt the party flags during their election campaign for Lok Sabha elections in April 2024.
Fact: The video is from 2021 where the farmer organizations had burnt BJP flags during a protest in Ellenabad. It has nothing to do with the 2024 Lok Sabha election campaign. Hence, the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
On performing the reverse image search using the keyframes of the viral video, we found that the same video has been in circulation since 2021.
Further, we performed a relevant keyword search based on a hint provided in the post’s title, indicating that the event occurred in Ellenabad during a bye-election. This led us to the discovery of the same video that had been uploaded by a Haryana-based news channel called Bebak Aawaz.
Besides, a video capturing the incident was posted on the YouTube channel ‘Khas Haryana’ and ‘Aapni News’ on 07 October 2021. According to the report within the video, the demonstration depicted farmers protesting the BJP in Ellenabad in 2021.
To sum up, the video showing farmers burning BJP flags is not recent; it is from 2021.
