A video of a large gathering at an annual Christian festival in Andhra Pradesh is being shared falsely linking it to the recent Congress-Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) rally held in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, falsely claiming it is from there.
DMK chief and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi held a public meeting in Coimbatore on April 12, 2024, ahead of the Lok Sabha election in the state on April 19, 2024. Both DMK and Congress are in alliance, with the DMK fielding Ganapathi P Rajkumar in Coimbatore and the AIADMK’s candidate is Singai G Ramachandran and BJP’s nominee is its state unit chief K Annamalai.
The viral video is being shared on X with the caption when translated reads, "This crowd in support of Rahul Gandhi will give Modi Ji sleepless nights. #LokSabaElection2024"
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The same video is being shared on X with the same misleading claim.
FACT-CHECK
BOOM found that the viral video is from an annual Christian festival held in Gorantla village in Andhra Pradesh, and not from the recently held Congress-DMK rally in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu.
Taking a hint from the replies to the viral post, we broke the video into key-frames and ran a keyword search and search results showed that the viral video is from March 2024, which pre-dates the Congress-DMK rally on April 12, 2024.
We found the same video posted on Hosanna Ministries, Guntur, Andhra Pradesh's Instagram handle. In this video we can see the same flood lights which are circular and match the viral video. The caption states that its it from the 47th Feast of Tabernacles.
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Feast of Tabernacles – also called as ‘Gudarala Panduga,’ in local parlance at Gorantla village in Andhra Pradesh is an annual Christian festival that is organised by Hosanna Ministries in March.
We also found a post by Hosanna Ministries on Instagram where the location for the 47th Feast of Tabernacles is mentioned as Gorantla-Guntur in Telugu, that would be held from March 7 to March 10, 2024.
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The YouTube channel of Hosanna Ministries had also posted a video on YouTube on March 13, 2024.
A comparison of the visuals with the viral video can be seen below:
Additionally, we also found that the flood lights in the original footage from the Congress-DMK rally are different compared to the ones in the viral video. This can be seen in the below post with visuals from the Congress-DMK rally.
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