A video clip of Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar meeting RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav at his residence in the presence of Tejaswi Yadav and Rabri Devi is being circulated on social media. The supposed recent meeting is being dubbed as a probable game-changer in national politics since the NDA government is dependent on Nitish-led JD(U)'s support and RJD is a part of the Opposition alliance.
X (formerly Twitter) user Shailendra Yadav (@ShailendraA2Y), who describes himself as a freelance journalist, shared the video on September 5, 2024, claiming that the incident took place "today". What he wrote in Hindi can be loosely translated as "The game is on in Bihar." (Archive)
The X handle Dhruv Rathee (Parody) (@dhruvrahtee) also shared the video. He claimed the meeting took place on September 5. (Archive)
The same video was also tweeted by user Dinesh Kumar (@DineshKumarLive) (Archive)
Fact Check
After breaking down the video into multiple keyframes, we ran reverse image searches, which led us to a two-year-old YouTube video uploaded by the OTV or OdishaTV on September 5, 2022, which contained the same visuals as the viral clip.
Further, a relevant keyword search led us to a tweet by news agency ANI (@ANI) from September 5, 2022. It said that Nitish Kumar had met RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav at latter's residence.
As readers can see, the photos in the tweet match the visuals in the viral video. Comparison below:
We also found a news report from September 5, 2022 by ANI which states, "Patna (Bihar) [India], September 5 (ANI): Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Monday met Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad Yadav at the latter's residence in Patna, in the presence of Deputy Chief Minister Tejaswi Yadav and former CM Rabri Devi."
Hence, from the above findings, it is clear that the video clip is not a recent one, rather it dates back to September 2022 when Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar called on Lalu Prasad Yadav at the latter's residence. The claims by different social media users that the meeting is recent and hence potentially game-changing are false.
Ankita Mahalanobish is an intern at Alt News.