Old video of Jyotiraditya Scindia’s election rally faux pas viral again

A 37-second long clip of BJP leader Jyotiraditya Scindia seemingly delivering an election campaign speech is viral on social media. In the clip, Scindia can be heard initially asking the crowd to vote for the ‘Hand’ symbol, which is the political symbol of the Congress. Soon he can be heard correcting himself and asking voters to vote for the ‘Lotus’, the political symbol of the BJP.

Claiming that this slip-up by Scindia happened recently, social media users have pointed out that the erstwhile Congress member hasn’t yet forgotten his ‘first love’. Scindia, a former Congress MP, had joined the BJP in March 2020.

X (formerly Twitter) Blue user and national media panellist of Congress Surendra Rajput ‏(@ssrajputINC) shared the above-mentioned clip on October 15 with a caption in Hindi that can be translated as: “Even a traitor cannot forget his first love! What do you think Jyotiraditya?” The tweet has received over 1 lakh views and has been retweeted over 1,000 times. (Archive)

ग़द्दार भी पहला प्यार नहीं भुला सकता!
क्यो ज्योतिरादित्य pic.twitter.com/71AIY8DDxI

— Surendra Rajput ‏ (@ssrajputINC) October 15, 2023

Another X Blue user, Modani (@JahirSpecial), shared the same video with the following caption: “Is Congress still in his heart and mind?” The tweet has received over 2.11 Lakh views and has been retweeted over 400 times. (Archive)

क्या इनके दिल-ओ-दिमाग में अभी भी कांग्रेस ही है…🤔🤔🤔 pic.twitter.com/rA9HEfagV0

— Modani (@JahirSpecial) October 15, 2023

Several other users on X and Facebook shared the viral video with similar captions.

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Fact Check

We broke down the video into multiple keyframes and ran a reverse image search on a few of them. We came across some tweets carrying the viral video shared in 2020. (Tweet 1, 2, 3)

Hence, it is clear that the video has been on the internet since 2020 and is not of a recent incident as claimed by social media users.

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We came across an YouTube video report by NDTV from November 1, 2020, about the slip-up by the BJP politician. In the description section of the video, it is mentioned that Jyotiraditya Scindia had left the Congress to join the BJP in March of 2020, about seven or eight months before the slip-up by him at an election campaign as a BJP politician in Dabra, Madhya Pradesh.

Jyotiraditya Scindia joined the Congress in 2002 and had been a member of the party for 18 years, before quitting to join the BJP. 22 other Congress legislators, including six ministers, who were Scindia loyalists, resigned with him plunging the Kamal-Nath led Madhya Pradesh state government into a crisis.

A relevant keyword search led us to several news reports from 2020 reporting on this incident. In a report by The Economic Times, Madhya Pradesh BJP spokesperson was quoted saying that this sort of mistake could happen by anyone and that Scindia immediately rectified himself.

Therefore, it is clear that the viral video of BJP politician Jyotiraditya Scindia mistakenly asking to vote for Congress is an old one dating back to 2020, the same year in which he switched from the Congress to the BJP. The claim that this is a recent incident is false.