This video of a few protestors blocking Smriti Irani’s cavalcade in UP took place in 2020. - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
January 24, 2022
A video of a group of people blocking the cavalcade of Smriti Irani is being shared on social media with a sarcastic description that she received a great welcome in Uttar Pradesh. It is being shared in the context of upcoming Assembly elections in the State. Let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Recent video of people blocking the cavalcade of Smriti Irani in UP ahead of Assembly elections.
Fact: The video is not a recent one. The incident took place in 2020. Several news agencies reported that a few Congress workers protesting over the Hathras rape incident blocked Smriti Irani’s cavalcade in Varanasi. Hence the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
When the screenshots of the video were run through Google Reverse Image Search, many similar videos were found in the search results. Those videos were found to be uploaded in October 2020. So, the incident in the video is not a recent one.
When the incident happened in October 2020, it was widely reported by many news agencies. Some of those news reports can be read here, here, here, and here. According to those reports, a group of Congress workers protesting over the Hathras rape incident blocked Smriti Irani’s cavalcade in Varanasi. The photos of the incident can be seen here.
To sum it up, an old video from 2020 is shared as a recent video of people blocking Smriti Irani’s cavalcade in UP ahead of Assembly elections in the State.