A video currently doing the rounds on social media shows West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee being greeted with chants of ‘Jai Shri Ram’. It has been claimed that the incident took place at the Raj Bhavan in Kolkata. BJP MP from Karnataka, Shobha Karandlaje is among those who have shared this video clip on Twitter.
What a Sight!!#MamataBanerjee being welcomed with #JaiShreeRam chants outside the Kolkata Rajbhavan.
She must be getting #JaiShreeRam welcomes very often these days. pic.twitter.com/ymoRzY1KY4
— Shobha Karandlaje (@ShobhaBJP) May 29, 2019
Mahesh Vikram Hegde, founder of the fake news website Postcard News has also posted this video on his Twitter account, saying that the West Bengal CM is being trolled openly at the Raj Bhavan.
Now She Trolled Openly in Bengal Raj Bhavan
What a beautiful reaction,
I love the kind of faces she make 😂😂 pic.twitter.com/DQxpm5qdtJ— Mahesh Vikram Hegde (@mvmeet) May 28, 2019
The video has also been circulated on Facebook. Posted by Vivek Shetty (also founder of Postcard News) on May 28, the video clip has been viewed over 215,000 times and shared over 6700 times so far.
Now She Trolled Openly in Bengal Raj Bhavan 😝
Posted by Vivek Shetty on Tuesday, May 28, 2019
Video shot in early 2019
Alt News found that the original video, uploaded by a India Today correspondent, has different audio from the clip which has been circulated widely. The video clip had been uploaded by Indrajit Kundu on Twitter on February 1, 2019 and shows Mamata Banerjee greeting BJP Bengal chief Dilip Ghosh at the state assembly and NOT the Raj Bhavan.
#Bengal chief minister @MamataOfficial and #Bengal BJP chief @DilipGhoshBJP came face to face at the state assembly today. Watch what happend! #JabWeMet pic.twitter.com/02qHzDNRLT
— Citizen Indrojit | নাগরিক ইন্দ্রজিৎ (@iindrojit) February 1, 2019
In the above video clip which is 11 seconds long, Mamata Banerjee asks Dilip Ghosh, “Dilip Babu, are you fine?”, to which Ghosh replies, “I am absolutely fine madam”.
Audio has been tampered with
The backdrop to this issue about Mamata Banerjee and the ‘Jai Shri Ram’ slogan is an incident which had occurred in early May 2019 when the TMC chief was campaigning for the Arambagh Lok Sabha seat. Mamata Banerjee was greeted with slogans of Jai Shri Ram as her convoy had passed by. Responding to the sloganeering, Banerjee had stepped out of the car to confront the sloganeers. A video report of the same by NDTV is posted below.
It may be noted over here that in the video which is currently being shared, at 0:03 minutes, a giggle can be heard. The same is faintly audible in the video posted above, at 0:44 minutes. Alt News compared the audio in the two video clips and confirmed that audio from the incident which took place at Arambagh in early May was laid over the audio of the video clip of Mamata Banerjee at the state assembly.
In conclusion, the video clip showing Mamata Banerjee greeted with Jai Shri Ram slogans at the state assembly in Kolkata, has been edited with the original audio removed. The story was earlier fact-checked by Boom Live.
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