Did Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah Insult Santosh Trophy Winning Footballers? Here’s the truth…

A video showing Karnataka Football team sitting on footpath with the Santosh Trophy is going viral on social media platforms. It is alleged that the Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah meted out this mistreatment to the Champion footballers. 

However, when we investigated the video, we found that the incident is three months old and Siddaramaiah was not the Chief Minister of Karnataka. Here is the complete account of the incident seen in the viral video.

Viral Video

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In the post given above, we can see a video showing football players sitting on a footpath with the trophy. The video anchor explains that these individuals are the victorious football players of Karnataka’s Santosh Trophy, who were forced to sit on the footpath.  He further explains the Footballers were called at 7 AM but were made to sit on the footpath until 10 AM as CM came late. He also requests politicians to not insult footballers in this way.

The caption of the post is as follows: “Karnataka State Football Team recently won Santosh Trophy in Saudi Arabia, and this is how these players were treated by the Siddaramullaha” Thus, alleging that the current Karnataka CM Siddiramaiah (called mockingly as Siddaramullaha in the caption) meted out this poor treatment to the champion footballers of the state. 

Let us check how true these allegations are, and what the real context of this video is.

Fact Check

We searched for Karnataka’s Santosh Trophy win on Google and found results that indicated that this event happened in March earlier this year. As per media reports, the Karnataka football team won the Santosh Trophy after 54 years in Al Fahd Stadium in Riyadh. They defeated Meghalaya in the finals. 

Read full article – The Print | Archived Link

However, the results of the Karnataka assembly elections were declared on May 13^th and Siddaramaiah was sworn in as the Chief Minister on 20^th May this year. Hence, Siddaramaiah was not the Chief Minister when Karnataka won Santosh Trophy in March. We also found an article reporting former CM Bommai felicitated the winner of Santosh Trophy. The article also reports how Bommai made the players wait on the footpath for an hour and a half. 

Read full article here – IBT | Archived Link

As per the report, the incident happened on 17 March 2023. Thus, it is clear that the CM in question here is not Congress’s Siddaramaiah but former BJP CM Basavaraj Bommai. Footballer Dhanraj Dhurve initially uploaded the video being circulated here on his YouTube channel. He shared the clip with a plea to politicians, urging them to refrain from demeaning footballers. The short posted on his YouTube can be seen below:

The video does not have the date and other details of the incident. Hence, people could not make out whether this incident was recent or old. 

Conclusion

The video showing Karnataka footballers waiting for the CM on the footpath is not recent. Our investigation reveals that the Chief Minister in question was Basavaraj Bommai and not the current CM, Siddaramaiah contrary to what is being alleged.