By: Anurag Baruah
December 8 2022
False: AIMIM MLA Akbaruddin Owaisi said he would destroy the Congress party by collaborating with PM Modi.
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Fact-Check
The Verdict False
The AIMIM MLA had not said anything about collaborating with PM Modi but was talking about wiping out both the BJP and Congress in his speech.
Claim ID 6b06eecd
Context
Assembly Elections are being held in multiple states across India, leading to an increase in political narratives trending on social media. Gujarat, in particular, has witnessed All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) emerging as a competitor against the India National Congress party (INC) in certain pockets of the state. The AIMIM is a political party based primarily in Hyderabad. The INC has made allegations that AIMIM is the "B-team" of the BJP since, by entering the Gujarat election, it is splitting Muslim votes in favor of the BJP.
INC leader Digvijaya Singh recently tweeted a newspaper clipping that reported that the AIMIM MLA from Telangana, Akbaruddin Owaisi, had stated that he would wipe out the INC with the aid of Prime Minister Modi. Singh wrote in his tweet that this is not surprising as both the BJP and AIMIM spread hatred.
Following this, a short video of Akbaruddin Owaisi speaking in a public meeting circulated on Twitter. The post claims that Akbaruddin Owaisi spoke about destroying the INC by collaborating with Prime Minister Modi, implying that AIMIM is the “B-team” of the BJP. However, this is false. In his speech, Owaisi criticized both parties and did not mention collaborating with the BJP to destroy the INC.
In Fact
By conducting a keyword search, we discovered a longer version of the viral video on the Aaj Tak YouTube channel published on February 6, 2016, with the headline, "Will wipe out the BJP and Congress from the country: Akbaruddin Owaisi." The report mentions that MLA Akbaruddin was talking about destroying not only the INC but also the BJP in the video.
The complete video of the speech can be seen on the MLA's Facebook page, in which he attacks both the INC and the BJP. The part of the video which has been uploaded in the Twitter post starts from 55:00 onwards.
A Zee News Report about the same speech mentioned that MLA Akbaruddin was speaking at a public meeting at Baba Nagar in Hyderabad in 2016. The report includes the full version of the viral video and quotes the AIMIM MLA as saying, "Badi dhoom se Narendra Modi ke saath iss Congress ka janaaza bhi uthayunga (we will finish off Narendra Modi and Congress from the country with great fanfare)."
A Business Standard report further confirmed that MLA Akbaruddin said he would wipe out the BJP and the INC from the country. BJP leader Zafar Islam responded to Akbaruddin's speech, saying, "But as far as his statement on Modi ji is concerned, I think he is building castles in the air."
The Verdict
A small section from AIMIM MLA Akbaruddin Owaisi's speech from 2016 was shared with false context. Owaisi attacked both the BJP and INC in his speech, which becomes clear in the full version of the video. Therefore, we have marked this claim as false.