Congress MLA Hari Singh fell off camel? No such MLA exists, Tik Tok video viral

“राजस्थान में कांग्रेस विधायक हरि सिंह चुनाव प्रचार में ऊंट की सवारी करते हुए ..अब तो जानवरों को भी कांग्रिस रास नहीं आती (Congress MLA Hari Singh riding a camel during election campaign in Rajasthan. Now, even animals do not like Congress),” is a message viral on social media, accompanying a video that shows a man, trying to get atop a camel’s back, falling off the animal. From a Facebook profile of one Kanak Mishra, the video had 3,000 shares at the time of writing this article.

Rajesh Jindal, who was found running the fake news website hindutva.info, has also posted the clip on Facebook.

The video has been doing rounds on social media since March.

राजस्थान में कांग्रेस विधायक हरि सिंह का चुनाव प्रचार…
ऊंट की सवारी करते हुए👇 pic.twitter.com/ItsbzDtpxg

— Diksha Kaushik (@MsDikshaKaushik) March 19, 2019

It was also viral with the English text – “Rajasthani Congress leader Hari Singh started his prachar.”

Even animals spook Congress.
Rajasthani #Congress leader Hari Singh started his prachar! And has a fall. Too many bad omen for @INCIndia
Wish Pappu was instead of his slave.#ModiChantSpooksCong pic.twitter.com/E590ReePFj

— Chowkidar (@sttalkindia) March 20, 2019

The clip was circulated on WhatsApp as well.

There is no Congress MLA named Hari Singh

To authenticate the veracity of the claim, Alt News first checked if the Congress party has any incumbent MLA named Hari Sigh. My Neta, a website that contains details about state and central legislators, did not include any information about the said person. ‘Congress MLA Hari Singh’ was, therefore, a piece of fabricated information used to propagate a false narrative.

2018 Tik Tok video

If one notices carefully, the video has a stamp of the media app Tik Tok. The username of the person who posted the video was ‘nadeemmg07’.

Upon searching the username on Google, we were able to trace back the video to 2018 when it was uploaded by a user ‘nadeemmg07’, now changed to ‘nadeemmg04’.

In conversation with India Today, Nadeem revealed that the video was shot in his village Sawayaya Hasan near Unchahar in Raebareli, Uttar Pradesh. Speaking to locals from the village, India Today found that the man who fell off the camel’s back was one Vakil Ahmed Khan and the incident took place during Diwali last year at a wedding. Khan confirmed that it was indeed him in the viral video.

Recently, another fictitious Congress MLA found a place not only in the fake news ecosystem on social media but also in mainstream media. A video of a man praising PM Modi was picked up by Republic TV and broadcast on its ‘Hello Bharat’ program as Congress MLA Anil Upadhyay praising the Prime Minister. It was later found that the man was a mere BJP supporter and his name was Mohan (Munna) Pandey.