Garlands thrown at Akhilesh Yadav in Kannauj rally, not shoes, as claimed on social media

by Oishani Bhattacharya

A video from a Samajwadi Party rally is being widely shared on social media where one can see party president Akhilesh Yadav standing on a platform. It is being claimed that the crowd threw shoes at him.

Premium subscribed X (formerly Twitter) user Flt Lt Anoop Verma (Retd.) 🇮🇳 (@FltLtAnoopVerma) shared the above-mentioned clip on May 9 with the caption: “Count the No of Shoes 👞 hurled at Akhilesh Yadav
Correct answer will get a gift hamper”. His tweet garnered over 1.1 lakh views and 500 retweets.

The readers should note that Alt News has found @FltLtAnoopVerma sharing misinformation several times. For instance, in September 2021, he falsely claimed that the New York Times had described Prime Minister Modi as the “Last, Best Hope of Earth”.

Several other users on social media shared the video of Akhilesh Yadav with the same claim.

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Fact Check

We noticed that the viral video had a watermark of an Instagram account: @vikashyadavauraiyawale. We searched for the user on Instagram and found the viral video on his profile. There was no mention of shoes being hurled at Akhilesh Yadav in the original video or in the caption.

On further inspection, towards the end of the viral video, a zoomed-in frame showed flower garlands being flung towards Akhilesh Yadav. Below are a few screengrabs where one can see the garlands.

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On running a relevant keyword search we found the video of the speech that Akhilesh Yadav delivered in Kannauj on April 27. There was no disruption of any kind during the speech.

We also came across a tweet shared by the official X page of the Samajwadi Party where they shared several images from the same rally. In there one can see the platform Akhilesh Yadav is heaped with flower garlands.

Further, we reached out to an SP leader in Kannauj who rubbished the claims and confirmed to Alt News that no untoward incident had happened in any of the rallies held by Akhilesh Yadav.

Hence, the claims that shoes were hurled at the Samajwadi Party national president are completely false. The viral video itself shows that Akhilesh Yadav being greeted by the crowd with flower garlands.

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