In a veiled attack on Congress, several social media users implied that party leader Rahul Gandhi was giving the false impression of interacting with different sets of people. Comparing his interactions from two separate occasions, they said the same person could be seen sitting with Gandhi, once dressed as a coolie or railway porter and then appearing as a student of Delhi University.
Verified X user (@BeingPolitical1) shared the images of his interactions side-by-side, alleging that the same person was doubling as a porter and a student on different days. At the time of this article being written, the post racked up nearly 800,000 views and was reshared 5,000 times. (Archive)
The pro-Right X handle, Hindutva Knight (@HPhobiaWatch), also shared the images with a similar claim. Alt News has previously called out this user for amplifying communal misinformation. (Archive)
Another X user, Jitendra Pratap Singh (@jpsin1), also posted the comparison images with the same claim. (Archive)
Other X users, such as @rahuldev2, @BesuraTaansane and @ChandanSharmaG also amplified these allegations. (Archives 1, 2, 3)
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Fact Check
To verify the authenticity of the claims, we first looked for the source images used in the comparison.
On March 1, 2025, Rahul Gandhi shared some images from his meeting with porters at the New Delhi Railway Station. The Congress leader was thanking them for their service following the stampede that took place at the station on February 15, when the Maha Kumbh Mela was underway, in which at least 18 died, and many were injured.
We also found a video of this interaction uploaded on Rahul Gandhi's official YouTube channel on March 5.
The other picture, which allegedly shows the same person appearing to be a student, has been taken from a meeting between Rahul Gandhi and the Delhi University Students Union (DUSU). The official X handle of the Indian Youth Congress (@IYC) had posted about this meeting on May 27.
A video of this interaction was also shared on Gandhi's YouTube channel on May 27.
Based on these images and videos, we closely examined the two people that social media users claimed were the same person. The comparison below clearly shows that these allegations do not hold water.
Alt News was also able to confirm the identity of the person highlighted in the DUSU meeting. He is Lokesh Choudhary, the joint-secretary of the student body (@Lokeshnsui9). On May 28, Choudhary also responded to the viral claims, calling them claims spread out of fear by Right-wing social media users and the BJP.
Thus, claims implying that Rahul Gandhi and the Congress employed 'actors' to pose as different people for their interactions are baseless. Alt News was able to verify that the two people social media users claimed were the same are, indeed, two different individuals, with one of them being Delhi University student body secretary Lokesh Choudhary.
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