Video of the bullock cart race held in Karnataka shared as Rahul Gandhi’s rally in Maharashtra

This video is not from Maharashtra. It shows a bullock cart race held in Karnataka on 5 March and has no connection with Rahul Gandhi’s rally.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has been cornering the Modi government on the issue of electoral bonds for a long time. Recently, after the release of electoral bond data, a video of a massive crowd is going viral on social media. By sharing the post, users claim that this video is of Rahul Gandhi’s public meeting in Maharashtra after the disclosure of electoral bonds. 

The caption of the vide states, “Crowd at #Rahul Gandhi’s rally in Maharashtra”.

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Fact Check- 

We started our investigation by running a Google reverse image search and the results led us to the same video uploaded on the Instagram account user named Abhijeet Kalage .The video has been shared on March 5, 2024. Election Commission had released the data of electoral bonds on March 14, whereas the video was already available before that. It is clear from this that the viral video is not recent. 

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Following that, we examined both the viral video and the videos we received. This confirmed that the two videos were identical. For more details, we contacted Instagram user Abhijeet Kalage. Abhijeet said, “I was the one who shot this video. This video is not of Rahul Gandhi’s rally. Rather, it is a video of a bullock cart race. This race took place at Eksamba Chikodi near the Maharashtra-Karnataka border. People had gone here to watch the race. This race happens every year. The photo seen in the big banner seen in the video is not the picture of Rahul Gandhi. This is the photo of the organizer of the race”. 

You can see a comparison of both images below.

With this information we conducted further investigation and found another video of bullock cart race on YouTube channel Explore Chikodi. Hash tags of Examba , Savkar , Prakash Hukkeri and Ganesh Hukkeri have been used in it. In this video, we can see a bullock cart goes out of control and runs over the people present there. The same big hoarding that is similar to the one in the viral video can also be seen right in front of it. :

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Further, we also found a live video of this bullock cart race dated March 5, 2024, on a Facebook account named Ganesh Hukkeri , in which the approximately 53-minute long video shows several scenes that match the viral video, in which the same people are seen at different times. Banners and hoardings can also be seen. 

Taking account of these evidences we found that the viral video is of the bullock cart race held in Belagavi district of Karnataka on 5 March, 2024 and has no connection with Rahul Gandhi’s public meeting.

Conclusion- 

Fact Crescendo found the claim made along with the viral video to be Misleading. The video of the bullock cart race held in Karnataka on 5 March went viral as a public meeting of Rahul Gandhi at Maharashtra.