Old video of campaign against BJP goes viral again linking to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections

The video shows an anti-BJP campaign that was carried out ahead of the West Bengal assembly elections in 2021.

General elections will be held in India from 19 April 2024 to 1 June 2024 to elect the 543 members of the 18th Lok Sabha. Social media is geared up with so many images videos related to elections. Against this backdrop, a video showing several people holding up placards and urging not to vote for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is going viral with the claim that it shows a protest against the BJP before the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

In the video we can see some persons holding the placards contain the same text “No Vote To BJP” in English and “No division in Bengal” in Bengali written on it. 

The caption of the viral video states, “Meanwhile in Bengal #NoVoteToBJp” 

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Fact Check-

We started our investigation by running a keyword and reverse image search on Google, whose results led us to a YouTube account named “No Vote To BJP” uploaded the same video on 13 February, 2021. The description of the video states a large number of people unanimously expressed their views not to vote for BJP at several iconic places of Kolkata. At various prominent places in Kolkata, many people are collectively appealing not to vote for the BJP.

In this sequence, we searched for news related to “No Vote to BJP” campaign and found that a group of political activists had set up this platform in West Bengal. According to news reports in March 2021, a platform named ‘Bengal Against Fascist RSS-BJP’ had prepared a ‘No vote for BJP’ campaign. The investigation led us to several news articles, such as those published by The Wire and The Hindu in February and May 2021.

According to a report published by The Times Of India in April 2021, the campaign was spread to 20 districts in West Bengal. One such protest was in Kolkata, where people can be seen holding a “No Vote To BJP” note.

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We also found an explicit version of the video on the YouTube channel of ‘No Vote to BJP’, which was uploaded on April 2, 2021. It is written in the caption of the video that all the Bengalis of the world should unite and ‘No vote to BJP’. 

Taking account of these evidences we can clearly understand that an old video of a campaign against voting for the BJP in West Bengal is being falsely linked to the upcoming 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

Earlier in April 2023 we debunked the same video in connection with the Karnataka assembly election.

The video does not show worldwide campaign against BJP ahead of the Karnataka assembly elections

Conclusion-

Fact Crescendo found the claim made along with the viral video to be Misleading. The video shows an anti-BJP campaign that was carried out ahead of the West Bengal assembly elections in 2021; it has no links with the upcoming 2024 Lok Sabha elections.