Video involving a Woman Congress leader from Odisha shared as a Congress minister from Karnataka - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
June 8, 2023
A video is being circulated on social media in which a man garlands a woman and then blows kisses at her. A social media post sharing this video describes it as a unique way a woman is honoured for joining Congress in Karnataka. Let’s fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim:  A woman gets garlanded, and kisses are blown at her while joining the Congress party in Karnataka.
Fact: The video features Odisha Congress MLA Taraprasad Bahinipati and his wife, Meenakshi Bahinipati, and neither of them is associated with the Karnataka Congress. Hence the claim made in the post is False.
Upon investigation, it was found that the video shows Tara Prasad Bahinipati, an MLA from Odisha, garlanding his wife, Meenakshi Bahinipati, and blowing kisses at her.
A search on the internet with relevant keywords led us to a news report published by ‘Latestly.in’ in January 2023, explicitly identifying Taraprasad Bahinipati as the man in the video and Minakshi Bahinipati as the woman.
Taraprasad is MLA of Jeypore Assembly Constituency in Odisha, and his wife, Minakshi Bahinipati, is the Koraput District Congress Committee president. Additionally, News 18 Odia uploaded the same video on their YouTube channel in December 2022, further substantiating its origin.
Furthermore, Tara Prasad Bahinipati shared the same video on his Facebook page on 28 December 2022. The evidence overwhelmingly proves that the individuals in the viral video are Tara Prasad Bahinipati, a Congress MLA from Odisha, and his wife, Meenakshi Bahinipati, and they have no connection to the Karnataka Congress.
To sum up, this post wrongly identifies the woman in this video as a Congress minister from Karnataka; she is a Congress leader from Odisha.