A video going viral on social media shows Congress leader Rahul Gandhi watching a concert with Rajasthan's Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, with a Bhojpuri song playing in the background. Posts sharing the video purports to show the Congress leader watching a Bhojpuri concert with suggestive lyrics.
BOOM found that the viral video has been doctored, with its audio being altered. The original video, accessed by BOOM, shows Gandhi listening to singer Sunidhi Chauhan's perform the song "Right Here, Right Now" from Bollywood film "Bluffmaster", at Jaipur's Albert Hall Museum on December 16, 2022, to celebrate 100 days of Bharat Jodo Yatra. The audio was altered to replace Chauhan's performance with a Bhojpuri song.
The video has been tweeted with a caption in Hindi by Wasim R Khan, President of the Mumbai Minority Morcha affiliated to the Bharatiya Janata Party. The tweet reads, "After the tight schedule of Bharat Jodo Yatra, to get rid of tiredness, first lifted the veil and then slept on the stomach listening to a decent song, Mr ji."
(Original text in Hindi: "भारत जोड़ो यात्रा के टाइट शेड्यूल के बाद थकावट दूर करने के लिए पहले घूँघटा उठाया फिर पेट पर सुलाया जैसा सभ्य गाना सुनते हुए श्रीमान जी।")
Click here and here to watch the video and archived link.
Several users also shared the video on Facebook with the same claim. View here and here.
Fact Check
BOOM ran a reverse image search with keyframes of the video and found several posts from December 2022 containing the the same clip. However, these videos - showing the exact same scenario - had a different song playing - "Right, here, Right now" by Sunidhi Chauhan from the 2005 film "Bluffmaster".
Akhilesh Tiwari, a journalist for ABP News also tweeted the video in which Chauhan can be heard singing.
The same video uploaded on YouTube by a vlogger also shows Chauhan performing same song, which can be heard from 16:18 timestamp onwards.
On December 16, 2022, Nitin Agarwal, National Coordinator, Social Media in-charge for Maharashtra Congress, tweeted a video clip along with three images, stating that singer Sunidhi Chauhan had performed in a concert held at Albert Hall, Jaipur, to celebrate 100 days of Gandhi's Bharat Jodo Yatra march.
A New Indian Express report published on December 17, further confirmed that Chauhan had performed at Albert Hall Museum. The report further states that besides Rahul and Gehlot, other senior Congress functionaries also attended the event.