A video (here, here, & here) showing former Deputy Chief Minister of Bihar and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Yadav holding a portable Bluetooth speaker in front of a microphone at an election rally, with Prime Minister Modi’s voice audible in the background, is circulating widely across social media platforms. In the video, PM Modi can be heard speaking in Hindi about RJD’s alleged involvement in the fodder scam and other corruption scandals. In this article, we verify the authenticity of the viral video.
Claim: Video of Tejashwi Yadav playing PM Modi’s speech discussing RJD’s involvement in various scams at an election rally.
Fact: This viral video is a digitally altered one. The audio in the original video has been replaced with another audio track. The viral video depicts Tejashwi Yadav playing compilations of Narendra Modi’s old speeches from a portable Bluetooth speaker during an election rally in Bihar’s Madhubani district on 30 April 2024. In the original video, Yadav played a compilation of promises made by Narendra Modi, which he alleged have not been fulfilled. The audio in the viral video has been taken from a speech delivered by PM Modi on 27 June 2023, where he addressed a conference of BJP booth level workers held in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
To verify the authenticity of the viral video, we conducted a Google reverse image search using keyframes from the video. This search led us to a news report published by ‘Hindustan Times’ on 01 May 2024, titled: “Tejashwi Yadav plays Narendra Modi’s old speeches in Bluetooth speaker | Watch,” featuring one of the keyframes from the viral video. According to this report, Tejashwi Yadav played recordings of Narendra Modi’s old speeches from a portable Bluetooth speaker during an election rally in Bihar’s Madhubani district.
The report also included a post from Tejashwi Yadav’s official X(Twitter) account, stating that the RJD leader played the recording to highlight the significant disparity between PM Modi’s words and actions. We then located the same video(archive link) on Tejashwi Yadav’s X(Twitter) account. The caption of the post reads: “Yesterday in the election meeting, a friend brought a portable Bluetooth speaker to me. What’s in it? You should also listen to it and make others listen to it. The public is now listening to and questioning the Prime Minister’s promises made in 10 years on speakers. So many lies have been told that it’s now beyond comprehension. These people can say and do anything to divert public attention. One should not lie so much while holding such a high position in public life. Say only what you can do.”( translated from Hindi to English)
In this video, recordings played by Tejashwi Yadav contain PM Modi’s voice saying, “Tell me, what will the poor eat if inflation continues to rise like this? but, the Prime Minister is unwilling to address the issue of inflation due to his ego”. Originally, Modi is heard launching attacks on former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the UPA-led government regarding inflation, the increase in gas cylinder prices, and his pledges of a Rs 1.25 lakh crore package by the central government. The compilation also includes Modi’s previous comments regarding farmers, commitments to bring back black money to the country, and his appeal in 2016 to citizens to hold him accountable after 50 days if they find any faults in his decision on demonetization. In this video, we can observe that the recordings played by Tejashwi Yadav did not include Modi’s allegations of corruption against the RJD, as heard in the viral video. It is clear from this that the viral video has been overlaid with a separate audio of PM Modi speaking about RJD’s involvement in various scams.
Tejashwi Yadav’s official Facebook page live-streamed the Madhubani Public meeting on 30 April 2024. These viral visuals of Yadav playing a compilation of Modi’s old speeches can be seen from the timestamp 08:09.
Furthermore, we conducted a keyword search to locate the overlaid audio of PM Modi in the viral video. We discovered that this viral audio was extracted from a speech delivered by Modi in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, on 27 June 2023. The segment can be heard from the timestamp 1:52:48 to 1:53:25 in the video. PM Modi gave this speech at a conference of booth-level workers held in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh.
To sum up, this video showing Tejashwi Yadav playing PM Modi’s speech discussing RJD’s scams is digitally altered.
