Fact Check: Priyanka Gandhi’s Viral Video Of Wayanad Rally Is Old

What’s the claim?

A video showing a large crowd enthusiastically raising their hands and waving Congress flags is gaining traction on social media. The video features Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, general secretary of the All India Congress Committee (AICC), dressed in light blue, standing atop a car and greeting supporters.

The video is being circulated with a claim that it shows Gandhi’s recent rally in the Wayanad parliamentary constituency in the southern Indian state of Kerala, ahead of the November 13 by elections. 

A user on X (formerly Twitter) shared the clip with a caption in Hindi that translates to, “A huge crowd gathered at Priyanka Gandhi’s Wayanad campaign.” The post had garnered over 25,000 views at the time of writing this story. Archived versions of the post can be found here, here, and here.

However, we found that this video is from May 2024 when Priyanka Gandhi held a rally in the western India state of Maharashtra’s Nandurbar district during the Lok Sabha elections.

What we found

On conducting a reverse image search, we found the same post was uploaded on Facebook (archived here) by the Goa Congress state president, Amit Patkar, on May 11, 2024. Using this clue, we found that Gandhi had addressed a Lok Sabha election campaign rally on the same day in Maharashtra’s Nandurbar district for Congress candidate Gowaal Padvi.

On May 11, 2024, Gandhi posted a similar video on her official Instagram account (archived here), captioned “Nandurbar, Maharashtra.” Upon closer inspection, both the Instagram video and the viral clip share striking visual elements, particularly a distinctive brown building visible in both. 

Additionally, Gandhi is seen greeting supporters in the same blue outfit. These details show that the footage is from her rally in Nandurbar.

The clip was also shared by the Indian Youth Congress on their official YouTube channel (archived here) and Facebook account (archived here) on May 11. 

Several news reports also covered Gandhi’s rally in Nandurbar on May 11, including a report by the Marathi news outlet Saam TV, which shared a screenshot of the rally that matches a scene from the now-viral video.

Lok Sabha by-polls in Wayanad

The Wayanad Lok Sabha by elections were necessitated by Congress MP Rahul Gandhi’s decision to vacate the seat to focus on Rae Bareli, another constituency he won in the Lok Sabha elections earlier this year.

On October 15, the Election Commission announced that the by-polls for Wayanad would be held on November 13. The Congress party chose Priyanka Gandhi as its candidate for this constituency. She filed her nomination papers and campaigned in Wayanad on October 28 and 29.

The Verdict

The video of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s rally from the 2024 Lok Sabha elections in Maharashtra has been falsely shared online as her campaign for the upcoming by elections in Wayanad, Kerala.