Video of pro-KCR slogans at Congress event in Telangana is edited

By: Rohith Gutta
November 2 2023

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Screenshots of posts on social media. (Source: X/Modified by Logically Facts)

What is the claim?

Assembly elections in the south Indian state of Telangana— where Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) is in power and the Indian National Congress (INC) is in opposition —are scheduled to be held on November 30. As election campaigns heat up, misinformation around key political figures is spreading unabated on social media. 

A video clip was shared on X (formerly Twitter) claiming that slogans in favor of current Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao (KCR) were raised during an election meeting held by Congress in Telangana. The 32-second video clip shows the crowd at the rally purportedly shouting ‘Jai KCR’ just as Revanth Reddy, Member of Parliament (MP) and the President of Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC), was about to begin his address. Archives of posts sharing the video can be viewed here and here. The text in Telugu overlaid on the video states, “Congress Palamuru meeting was rocked by pro-KCR slogans.” Palamuru or (undivided) Mahabubnagar is a district in Telangana.

Screenshots of posts on Social Media (Source: Facebook/X/Modified by Logically Facts)

The clip was shared on other social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube. Archives of such posts can be viewed here and here. 

However, this is an edited video clip, and pro-KCR slogans were not raised at the Congress event.

What did we find?

Using the text superimposed on the video, we looked into Congress public meetings held in Palamuru in the recent past. We found that Congress had organized a public meeting in Kollapur, located in Telangana’s Nagarkurnool district, on October 31, with former Congress President Rahul Gandhi in attendance. Nagarkurnool is one of the many districts that comprise the Mahabubnagar, also called Palamuru region. 

Various news channels like TV9 Telugu and ETV Telangana uploaded the livestream of the event on their YouTube channels.

We found the now-viral clip was captured in the TV9 livestream between the 30:40 -31:03 timestamps. Similarly, the same visual runs in the ETV livestream between the 15:00-15:33 timeframes. We noted that no pro-KCR slogans were raised in both livestreams; we could only hear the audience screaming in unison.

Since no specific slogans can be heard in the original videos capturing the event in question, it is clear that pro-KCR slogans were artificially added to spread false claims with the viral video. 

The verdict

Slogans favoring Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao were digitally added to a video of a Congress public meeting organized in the state. Therefore, we have marked this claim as fake.