A video of the road show of Samajwadi Party (SP) national president Akhilesh Yadav is going viral on social media, in which he is seen accepting the greetings of people on his campaign vehicle. ‘Kannauj Live’ is written on the video. Through this video it is being claimed that the public threw slippers and shoes at him during the campaign.
A handle named ‘Times of BSP’ on X (formerly Twitter) captioned the video, “At a gathering Swami Prasad Maurya After the shoe was used on Akhilesh Yadav, now the shoe was used on Akhilesh Yadav in his rally. The public has come to know their truth and how they are helping the BJP. Everything is being done under the planning of 2027.” Archived version of the post Here See. Other posts shared with similar claims Here, Here And Here See.
However, the viral claim is misleading. During the road show in Kannauj, Uttar Pradesh, people welcomed Akhilesh Yadav by throwing flowers and garlands instead of shoes and slippers.
How did we find out the truth?
On watching the viral video carefully, we find that ‘@vikashyadavauraiyawale’ is seen written on it along with the Instagram logo. Typically, this happens when the original video is downloaded from an Instagram user’s account. Taking a hint from this, we searched the same username on Instagram and found the account of a person named Vikas Yadav. We found a viral video uploaded on this account on May 2, 2024 (archive here).
This video is of slightly better quality than the viral post. When we slowed down this video, it came to light that people Akhilesh Yadav Flower garlands were thrown towards him. We did not see shoes or slippers anywhere in the entire video.
When and where is the video?
We searched based on the information received from the viral video and found a video (archive here) live streamed on Samajwadi Party’s YouTube channel on May 27, 2024, in which a woman wearing a white and red saree, who is the fifth member of the Kannauj Lok Sabha constituency, Rekha Verma, SP MLA from one of the assemblies — Bidhuna — is seen with Akhilesh Yadav. He can also be seen in the viral video at a time period of 10 seconds.
Many of this road show photos And Video We also found it on the official Facebook page of Samajwadi Party, where it was uploaded on 27 April 2024. In these, MLA Rekha Verma can be clearly seen in the same attire with Akhilesh Yadav. in posts It has been told that the scenes shown in it are from Rasulabad in Kannauj.
We spoke to MLA Rekha Verma, seen with Akhilesh Yadav in the video, who refuted the claim of throwing shoes and slippers and said, “People were welcoming Honorable Akhilesh Yadav with flower garlands. It is clearly visible in the video that there are flower garlands.” He further said, “This video is from Gehra airstrip to Yakubpur and it falls in the assembly constituency of Kannauj Lok Sabha constituency. Gehra airstrip area is the border of Bidhuna and Rasulabad.”
from kannauj Lok Sabha Elections Searching for videos of contesting SP chief Akhilesh Yadav’s road show, we found a live streamed video of News18 UP Uttarakhand (archive here), in which people can be seen throwing flower garlands at Akhilesh Yadav on several occasions. One such scene can be seen in the video at time slot 4.35.16.
This road show is covered in a video report (archive) by NDTV. In our investigation, we did not find a single report stating that people had thrown shoes and slippers at Akhilesh Yadav in Kannauj or in any recent road show or rally. Dainik Bhaskar in one of its reports has published a time-wise detailed report on Akhilesh Yadav’s road show in Kannauj. There is no mention of any such incident in this report also.
Decision
Our investigation so far makes it clear that the social media user’s claim that people threw shoes and slippers at Akhilesh Yadav during his road show is wrong. In fact, people had welcomed Akhilesh Yadav by throwing flower garlands on him. Therefore we consider the viral claim to be misleading.
