Fact Check: Congress Didn’t Wave Pakistan Flags in Kerala Rally: 2019 Video Shows IUML Flags

A video going popular shows people marching through the streets with green flags that have a moon and stars on them. The video is said to be from a Congress election campaign in Thrissur, Kerala. You can also see models of Rahul Gandhi and the party leader K Muraleedharan. A lot of people on social media say that Pakistani flags were flown at the event.

While sharing the video, people wrote, “कांग्रेस का प्रचार केरला में सिर्फ हरे इस्लामिक झंडे, क्या अब भी आपको लगता है कांग्रेस देश के लिए सही है? (Only green Islamic colors at Congress’ campaign in Kerala. Still believe that Congress is the best choice for the country?

Research

On doing a reverse image search of the video screenshots, we found that it was shared on a Facebook page named കൊണ്ടോട്ടി പച്ചപട (Kondotty Pachapada) on 19 April, 2019. The bio of the page says that it is part of a party group.

The caption of the post is in Malayalam, and it says that the video is from Muraleedharan’s gathering in Vatakara, Kerala, where he ran for Lok Sabha in 2019 and won.

We also found a post on Muraleedharan’s Facebook page on April 13, 2019, that was about the video. Several pictures in this post show the leader of the Congress taking pictures with people at the gathering. In both the film and the pictures, you can see the green flags. Muraleedharan wears the same green flower in one picture as in the video that went viral. The people in the shots are also in that video.

We looked into the flags seen in the video some more. A check on Google showed that these flags belong to the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), a political party in Kerala that works with the Congress. By looking closely at the flags in the video, we can see that they are full green, while the Pakistani flag has a white part in it as well. Here is a study that shows how Pakistani flags and IUML flags are different.

Conclusion

The claim that Pakistani flags were waved during the Congress’s election campaign in Kerala is not true, according to the probe. In the movie, the flags you see are not of Pakistan. They belong to the IUML political party. The 2019 Lok Sabha election in Kerala is shown in this movie.