An old interview of Hardik Patel is being shared on social media platforms with a false claim that it shows the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader calling Prime Minister Narendra Modi a liar and praising Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) supremo Arvind Kejriwal.
BOOM found the interview dates back to 2016 when Hardik Patel led the Gujarat Patidar quota protests. Patel joined the BJP in June 2022 after quitting Congress.
The 40-seconds long clip shows Patel's response when he was asked to share his opinion about other political parties and its leaders. In the video, Patel calls PM Modi 'feku' (a liar) but says Kejriwal is 'the development of India' during the interview.
The video is captioned in Hindi which translates to, "BJP leader Hardik Patel said Modi is a liar, Kejriwal is the development of India".
(Original Text in Hindi: बीजेपी नेता हार्दिक पटेल बोले मोदी फेंकू है केजरीवाल डेवलपमेंट ऑफ इंडिया है)
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Fact Check
BOOM found that the viral clip is misleading and is from 2016 when Hardik Patel was not a part of the BJP.
In the video, news outlet NDTV's logo is visible on the top right corner of the clip and also on the boom mic being held by the reporter.
We ran a keyword search for "Hardik Patel Modi" on NDTV's YouTube channel and found a longer version of the same video that was uploaded on the channel on July 19, 2016.
The video is captioned as, "What Hardik Patel thinks of PM Modi and other 'netas'".
Taking a cue, we searched for news reports from 2016 and found a Mint news article published on July 19, 2016. The report mentioned Patel as a Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) leader who was leading an agitation in Gujarat with a demand to include the Patidar community under the other backward class (OBC) quota at that time.
Another keyword search for Hardik Patel led us to the news reports from March 12, 2019 when Patel joined the Congress asking its cadres to act together to defeat the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections 2019.
Patel quit Congress in June 2022 and joined the BJP saying he wants to act as a 'small soldier' under the leadership of PM Modi.
