Fact check: Old Video of BJP Candidate Welcomed with Garland of Shoes, Incorrectly Linked to 2024 Lok Sabha Polls

Every day, on social media, some video with false claims goes popular. India TV Fact Check is here to warn you about this kind of false material. Some people recently shared a video on social media of them greeting a BJP candidate with a flower made of shoes. The video was said to have been taken during the campaigning for the Lok Sabha elections 2024. Our research, on the other hand, showed that this video is being shared out of context and has nothing to do with the Lok Sabha 2024 elections.

What is going viral?

A person on the social media site X called @Rajikul2441 shared a video of a BJP leader being showered with shoes while running for office. It said “#BreakingNews: Special gift given to BJP leader” and had the word #LokSabhaElection2024 in it. This tweet was sent on April 19, 2024, the same day as the first round of votes for the Lok Sabha.

Investigation

This report was looked into by India TV’s Fact Check service. We took a picture of the video and searched for it with Google Lens. The search turned up a number of hits. We found a YouTube lin that led to the same video that was shared on social media. When the video’s description and release date were looked at, it was found to be from January 8, 2018. The description also said that locals in Dhar, Madhya Pradesh, decorated BJP candidate Dinesh Sharma with shoes.

It was through Google that I found a news story by Scroll.in that told me the whole truth about what happened. The story says that someone in Dhar, Madhya Pradesh, welcomed a leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) by giving him a bunch of shoes. The event happened while the BJP leader was campaigning for the municipal elections in Dhamnad town. “There is a serious problem with water,” the person who gave the leader a wreath said. We had said something bad about it. When our women went to the chairperson at the time to report, they were charged with a crime. They were called to the police office more than once at night. That’s the reason I did that.”

What came out in fact check?

According to a probe, a video from 2018 that shows a BJP leader being showered with shoes is being shared on social media in the wrong way at this time.