Fact Check: Chandrababu Naidu did not insult Pawan Kalyan at a public meeting
Legislative Assembly elections are scheduled to be held in Andhra Pradesh on May 13, 2024 to elect the 175 members of the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly. The votes will be counted and the results will be declared on June 4, 2024.
CBN Pawan Kalyan
Legislative Assembly elections are scheduled to be held in Andhra Pradesh on May 13, 2024 to elect the 175 members of the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly. The votes will be counted and the results will be declared on June 4, 2024.
The BJP, Telugu Desam Party and Janasena party announced that they will be fighting the 2024 Lok Sabha elections together. They had even started campaigning for the elections jointly, sharing a dias. The joint public meetings are named Prajagalam public meetings.
Amidst this, a video showing both the leaders on a stage and Chandrababu Naidu addressing the public has gone viral. In the viral video, the TDP leader can be heard saying that Pawan Kalyan cannot be sold for a quarter of a rupee even if we keep a rupee on his head, while addressing the crowd. The crowd can be heard cheering on this derogatory statement by the senior leader.
The claim in Telugu goes: “నెత్తిమీద రూపాయి పెడితే పావలాకి కూడా పనికిరాడు పవన్ కళ్యాణ్: చంద్రబాబు”. The video is shared virally on Facebook.
Fact check:
The claim is False. The TDP leader never made such a derogatory statement about the Janasena chief.
When we extracted the keyframes from the video and searched them using Google reverse image search, we found that several Telugu television channels had live-streamed the Prajagalam public meetings. This public meeting was held in the Vizianagaram district on April 24, 2024, where Chandrababu Naidu and Pawan Kalyan attended the meeting. The live streams of the news channels did not show any such statement made by the TDP leader. They can be heard criticizing the present chief minister of Andhra Pradesh YS Jaganmohan Reddy. There are no derogatory remarks made by Chandrababu Naidu about Pawan Kalyan.
Varahi news:
Tv5 news
TV9
According to a website named etemaaddaily, Telugu Desam chief Nara Chandrababu Naidu and Jana Sena chief Pawan Kalyan have criticized Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy during the public meeting held at Nellimarla, Vizianagaram district.
The article discusses topics mentioned by Chandrababu Naidu and Pawan Kalyan during the public meeting. However, there is nothing about the derogatory statements seen in the viral video.
Hence, the viral video showing Chandrababu Naidu and Pawan Kalyan shows the visuals from a public meeting held in Vizianagaram district of Andhra Pradesh. The audio of Chandrababu Naidu making derogatory comments about Pawan Kalyan during the public meeting was altered. The original live-streamed video did not have these derogatory comments. The claim is false.