A social media post accompanying a video of Samajwadi Party supremo Akhilesh Yadav speech is going viral across social media platforms. In the viral speech Akhilesh can be heard appealing people in Hindi, which loosely translates to ‘those who want to take law & order into their hands, those who don’t want to follow the law, they should vote for the Samajwadi Party. Those who want to do injustice to the poor, they should vote for the Samajwadi Party.’ Let’s fact-check the veracity of the video shared in the post.
Claim: Video of Akhilesh Yadav appealing for votes and asking anti-social elements to vote for the Samajwadi party.
Fact: Akhilesh Yadav’s speech in Auraiya, wherein his appeal to anti-social elements to refrain from voting to Samajwadi Party is digitally edited to show as if he appealed the anti-social elements to vote for SP. Akhilesh Yadav made such appeals earlier during his interaction with media. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
The viral video is a doctored version of an excerpt from Akhilesh Yadav’s speech at the Samajwadi Party Workers Conference (Karyakarta Sammelan) held on 16 February 2022 in UP’s Auraiya.
YouTube search with relevant keywords led us to a video titled ‘National President’s Workers’ Conference – Auraiya’ on Samajwadi Party’s official YouTube channel. The 21 seconds viral video is taken out from this speech of Akhilesh Yadav. From 23:52 to 24:14 timestamp of this speech, we can hear Akhilesh making an appeal that is exactly opposite to the appeal made in the viral video. In the original speech, Akhilesh’s appeal goes like ‘those who have to take law and order into their hands, and do not follow the law, they should not vote for Samajwadi Party. Those who want to do injustice to the poor, they should vote for the Samajwadi Party.’
From this, it is clearly evident that this part of Akhilesh’s speech is digitally edited to show that he is appealing to anti-social elements to vote for the party. Further, this is not the first time Akhilesh made such appeals. There are news reports of Akhilesh Yadav making similar appeals earlier which can be read here and here.
To sum it up, this video of Akhilesh Yadav appealing to anti-social elements to vote for SP is doctored.
