Old Video of Congress Leader Revived as a BJP MP Tearing Apart Her Own Government

A video of a woman lambasting the BJP government is being widely shared on social media platforms. The video is accompanied by a caption on Twitter claiming that the woman is Menaka Kumari, a BJP Member of Parliament, who is criticizing her own party leadership.

Archived Tweet

The text etched on the Kannada video claims that the woman is Menaka Kumari, a BJP MP, lambasting her own government. In the video, the woman can be seen getting emotional and accusing Prime Minister Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and the central government of being blind with power and ignoring the people’s views. She also accuses the BJP of spreading communal hatred and benefiting from the ensuing violence. Additionally, she criticizes the government for their failure to handle the COVID-19 situation. Similar posts were found on Facebook, and one of them can be seen below:

Facebook

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However, when we did a fact-check on this video, we found that the woman in the video is a Congress leader and not a BJP MP. Here is the fact-check.

Fact Check

We searched the websites of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha and found no BJP MP with the name Menaka Kumari. The only name that is close to Menaka Kumari is of BJP MP from Sultanpur, Maneka Gandhi. But the woman in the video is not Maneka Gandhi. You can see an image comparison of the woman with Maneka Gandhi below. It is clear they are not the same person.

Furthermore, this video is old and has been shared with a false narrative a few years ago as well. We had debunked this video when it was shared with a similar false narrative back in 2022. You can read our fact check in Hindi by clicking on the link provided below.

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We did a reverse image search of the screenshots of the video on Google and found that the video was originally posted on Facebook on 20 April 2021 as a Live Video by a user named Dolly Sharma. Dolly Sharma is a Congress leader and her full video can be found on her Facebook account. 

When this video went viral with the false claim that Maneka Gandhi was criticizing her own government, Dolly Sharma took to Twitter and clarified that the video belonged to her and was being shared falsely under the name of Maneka Gandhi.

Conclusion

The woman featured in the video is not a BJP MP, but rather a Congress leader named Dolly Sharma. The video went viral last year with a false claim that BJP MP Maneka Gandhi was criticizing her own government. Dolly Sharma refuted this claim on Twitter. Now, the same video is being shared under the name of a non-existent BJP MP, Menaka Kumari.