Polling for the 70 seats of the Delhi assembly is set to be held on February 5, with results slated for February 8. Ahead of the elections, the ever-present issue of Yamuna water has again taken centre stage with the BJP and Congress questioning the AAP government regarding the cleaning of the Yamuna river.

At the same time, the Aam Aadmi Party alleges that the Haryana government is poisoning the water of the Yamuna river. Meanwhile, former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal along with many senior leaders of the Aam Aadmi Party shared a 14-second slow motion video and claimed that Haryana chief minister Nayab Singh Saini pretended to drink water from the Yamuna, which he then spat out.

Arvind Kejriwal shared the video and wrote, “Haryana chief minister Nayab Singh Saini pretended to drink water from the Yamuna and then spat the same water back into the river. When I said that Yamuna water can be a threat to the lives of Delhiites due to ammonia adulteration, he threatened to file an FIR against me. They want to make the people of Delhi drink the same poisonous water which they themselves cannot drink. I will never let this happen.” (Archived link)

Aam Aadmi Party leader and Patparganj MLA Manish Sisodia retweeted Arvind Kejriwal’s tweet, saying that the BJP was unmatched when it came to hypocrisy and deceit. (Archived link)

Aam Aadmi Party national spokesperson and advocate Priyanka Kakkar shared the video and wrote that the BJP did not care about people’s lives and are simply causing a scene by pretending to drink the water and then spitting it back out. (Archived link)

The X handles of the Aam Aadmi Party, Aam Aadmi Party Delhi and Aam Aadmi Party Haryana also tweeted videos with similar claims. (Archived link 1, link 2, link 3)

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Apart from this, Aam Aadmi Party and Arvind Kejriwal accused Nayab Singh Saini of hypocrisy in a press conference, while explaining the harm caused by the amount of ammonia present in water from the Yamuna river. At the 5:36 mark in this press conference video, a viral video of Nayab Singh Saini was played and it was claimed that he spat out the water after taking it in his mouth. (Archived link)

Fact Check

We performed a reverse image search using one of the key frames taken from the viral video. We found a longer video depicting the same incident in a January 29, 2025 post by Asian News International (ANI) on X (formerly Twitter). ANI’s tweet stated, “Haryana CM Nayab Singh Saini drinking water from the Yamuna river at Palla village in Delhi”.

At the 3-second mark in this 57-second video, scenes from the viral video appear in which Saini is seen taking water in his hand and spitting it out. However, eight seconds later in the same video, Saini is again seen taking water from the Yamuna river in his hand and taking it in his mouth. He then wets both his hands and splashes the water on himself. This part has been removed from the video being circulated by Arvind Kejriwal and other Aam Aadmi Party leaders.

The video is also available on the X handle of Press Trust of India (PTI) and Indo-Asian News Service (IANS). After coming out of the river, he gives news bytes to other media channels, in which he talks about drinking the water from the Yamuna and accuses Kejriwal of creating panic among the people.

Media outlets like Live Hindustan, ETV Bharat and India TV have also covered this incident. Their reports state that Nayab Singh Saini tried to answer Arvind Kejriwal’s allegations of poisoning the Yamuna by drinking water from the river.

To sum up, Arvind Kejriwal and Aam Aadmi Party leaders shared a clipped video of Nayab Singh Saini and made misleading claims.

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