By Archis Chowdhury
An interview footage of Union Minister Nitin Gadkari has been cropped from a recent interview, and shared out of context by Congress' official X handle, to purportedly show him calling out the government led by his own party.
BOOM found that the video has been shared out of context, and that in the original interview to The Lallantop, Gadkari talks about the situation since independence, and then goes on to discuss the work done by the Bharatiya Janata Party to improve it. The latter part of his statement was cropped out by Congress' post, thus taking Gadkari's statement out of context.
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In the clip, Gadkari is heard is heard saying, "Today the villages, poor, laborers and farmers are unhappy. There are no good roads, no pure water to drink, no good hospitals, no good schools in the villages."
It was shared by Congress' official X handle, and that of Overseas Congress, along with many other pro-Congress accounts.
The captions being shared with the video read, "'Today the village, the poor, the workers and the farmers are sad. There are no good roads in the villages, no pure water to drink, no good hospitals, no good schools - Minister of Modi Government Nitin Gadkari'."
These posts purport that Gadkari is seen calling out his own government in the video.
Fact Check
BOOM noticed that the interview had the logo of Hindi news outlet The Lallantop, which hinted at the recent interview he gave to that outlet.
We looked through The Lallantop's YouTube channel, and found the entirety of the interview, uploaded on February 29, 2024.
Watching through the interview, we traced the concerned excerpt from 18:00 onward, where Gadkari is answering a question on the recent protests by farmers.
While responding to this question, the Union Minister talks about rural-urban migration from the time of Mahatma Gandhi. While discussing this he brings up the lack of infrastructure in rural India being a cause of discontentment among the rural population - which refers to the excerpt that was cropped and shared by Congress.
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Here is a transcript of Gadkari's statements, translated from Hindi to English:
"When Gandhiji was there, population up to 90% lived in the villages and why did this thirty percent migration happen gradually? The reason -
Today the villages, the poor, the labourers, the farmers are sad. The reason for this is that the economy of water, land, forests and animals is rural, agriculture, tribal, there are no good roads here, there is no pure water for drinking, there are no good hospitals, there are no good schools, there are no good prices for the farmers' crops. .”
And the sustainable development that was supposed to happen has happened, it is not that it has not happened. It has happened but not as much as it has happened in other sectors, after our government came, we are also doing a lot of work."
Upon listening to the entire interview, it is clear that Gadkari is talking about a longer period of time, since independence to the present. He then goes on to discuss the efforts made by the Bharatiya Janata Party to improve rural infrastructure.
The clips shared by Congress misrepresented Gadkari's statement, by removing the context of a longer period of time (since independence) and his comments on BJP's efforts to improve rural infrastructure.
