No, This Video Does Not Show Yogi Adityanath 'Bribing' Voters With Cash

A video of a person distributing money to a group of people in the presence of Yogi Adityanath has been revived on social media platforms with a caption that insinuates the Uttar Pradesh chief minister can be seen bribing voters with cash.

The video is being shared in the backdrop of the ongoing Uttar Pradesh assembly elections where voting began on Thursday.

The 44-seconds long video shows Yogi Adityanath is sitting on a chair while an aide distributes cash and and a group of people can be seen collecting the money one-by-one as their names are called out.

The caption with the video reads as, "Is this Today? Got this video from facebook, Distributing money in front of Yogi" (sic).

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Fact Check

BOOM performed a reverse image search on one of the videos key frames which led us to a similar picture available on the internet. However, when we opened the link, it turned out to be a different video.

We then checked Vinay Kumar Gautam's page (from the link), who had curated numerous videos of Yogi Adityanath, and found the same video. The video was uploaded on Vinay Kumar Gautam's page when Yogi Adityanath was an MP from Gorakhpur.

The video shows a person calling out names of people mentioned on a list and giving them money. At one point in the video, the man who was calling out names, can be heard saying, 'Faagulal, is it your brother's name? Did you people sow at two places?' The beneficiary answers the question, "We had sowed the same thing at two places." Yogi Adityanath then says, "It must be his brother's. Call him." Listening to the conversation it appears that the cash was being distributed as a compensation for loss of crops.

An old The Quint fact check article debunked the same video when it went viral ahead of Lok Sabha election 2019. The article also stated that the video dates back to April 2012 when Yogi Adityanath, at that time an MP from Gorakhpur, was providing compensation to the victims of a fire accident that had gutted the crops of several farmers of the constituency.

The Quint also reached out to Vinay Kumar Gautam.

"In April 2012, several farms in Gorakhpur were burnt. Then the MP from that seat, Yogi had come forward to give monetary support for farmers whose crops were burnt. He distributed about Rs 1,000 - Rs 2,000 per family, depending on the size of the plot," Gautam told The Quint.

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