Fact Check: Protest by tribal students viral in the name of Saini Samaj and Farmer’s protest

Due to the ongoing farmer’s protest in the country, many videos and pictures on social forums have been made viral. Fact Crescendo has exposed the truth behind the similar viral news related to farmer protests recently. At present, a video of a farmers protest is in great discussion on social forums. In the video, you will see large number of people standing at one place, the noise of drums and voices of people shouting can be heard in the background. After watching the video carefully, you will also see sticks in their hands and a flag is also visible. According to the viral claim, the video is from the Saini Kisan movement.

The title of the video reads, “Saini Kisan Andolan Saini Sahab.”

Facebook | Archive Link 

This video is being shared on social platforms extensively.

FACT-CHECK

The viral video is about the teacher recruitment movement initiated by tribal students on the Udaipur-Ahmedabad NH-8 highway near Dungarpur city in Rajasthan. This video has no relation with the Farmer’s protest and the Saini community.

We began investigating the above video and searched for comments mention in the Facebook post, where we noticed that a user had written that the viral video is about the protest by the tribal people in Rajasthan.

Keeping in mind the above comment, we did a keyword search and found many news articles on the Internet which had information about the tribal movement in Rajasthan. The news articles mentioned that,

In Rajasthan, tribal youth were demanding the filling-up of 1,167 vacant posts for teachers in the general category by teachers from their community, which lead to this protest.

The agitators became violent in no time. Many people also died in this violence and there was loss of property of millions. The Central Government had sent two teams of Rapid Action Force (RAF) to the state at the request of the Chief Minister. 35 policemen were injured in the violence and the vehicle of Additional SP of Dungarpur was burnt down by the protesters.

The protesters captured a 25-km stretch of the National Highway No. 8 connecting Udaipur to Ahmedabad. The miscreants attacked 65 houses of the general category people in Srinath Colony of Kherwara on 26th September. There are small hills in this area and the protesters armed with arrows and stones climbed up these hills and targeted nearby moving traffic and the police.

Dainik Jagran	Archive Link
Zee Rajasthan	Archive Link
Aaj Tak	Archive Link

Further, we searched for the relevant keywords on Facebook, and found the same video on a page called Dainik Khabraan. According to the title of that video, the scene shown in the video is of the protest by the tribal students in Rajasthan. The title of this video reads,

“The situation around Kherwara was very tensed, firing took place and tribal people burnt cars. Internet services stopped in Dungarpur after violence in Rajasthan teacher recruitment movement, CM convened meeting.

Let us tell you the candidates of the 2018 examination have been protesting for the last one fortnight for their demand to fill 1167 general category posts with Scheduled Tribe candidates.

On Thursday evening, protesters pelted stones at the police along with blocking the national highway in Bichhivada area. Apart from this, several vehicles including four police vehicles were also set on fire. Two police officers, including an ASP and a Station Head were injured in the stone pelting. After this the police had to control the situation using lathi-charge and tear gas.”

Facebook| Archive Link 

After this we contacted the daily news correspondent Sarjeet Singh,who confirmed to us that, “The video aired on Dainik Khabar’s Facebook page was sent to me by a friend of mine who was stuck on the road due to the road jammed due to the movement. The movement shown in the video is of the teacher recruitment movement carried out by the tribal movement on NH 8 near Kherwara in Dungarpur village. It was a three-day movement.”

Subsequently we contacted Sonubhati, a friend of correspondent Sarjeet Singh who sent this video to Sarjeet. He told us that, “I was there when the protest took place in Kherwara. I did not see the protest with my eyes but I was on the bus on that road to Kherwara. Due to the protest, there was a heavy traffic jam on the road, our bus was stopped 4-5 kilometers before the place of that protest.  For two to two and a half hours, our bus stopped there. Later, after proceeding ahead, I saw the people protesting there and all the damage they did to the trains by buring them. The video going viral came to me through social media and I forwarded it to Sarjit Singh. “

Keeping in view the above information, we contacted SP Jai Yadav of Dungarpur, he confirmed that the video going viral is from the teacher recruitment movement on NH8. He said that,

“The video that is going viral has no relation with the Kisan movement and Saini Samaj, the incident shown in the video is of the teacher recruitment movement by tribal students on NH 8 near Kherwara,Dungarpur. The Rajasthan Eligibility Examination for Teachers (REET) was held in 2018, in which the general category students need 60 percent marks to pass and the tribal students need 30 percent marks. Out of the total seats in the general category, 1166 seats are vacant and hence there was a demand by the reserved students to allot those 1166 seats to them and hence they were agitating. This episode has been going on for the last two years, but this time they have done a terrible movement. The case was heard in the High Court, where the request of tribal students was rejected. According to the High Court, it would be unconstitutional to give the remaining seats of general category to reserved students. A special leave petition for this issue has been filed in the Supreme Court to pacify the three-day agitation.”

We were also told by SP of Dungarpur that in this movement, police arrested around 130 protesters and two people died in the shootout.

Conclusion: We found the above claim wrong after fact-checking. The video going viral is not about the farmer’s protest by the Saini society. The scene in the video is from a protest by tribal students on NH 8 near Dungarpur in Rajasthan.