Ahead of the West Bengal assembly elections, a video is being shared on social media platforms showing some Bharatiya Janata Party workers distributing money to a crowd with the claim BJP is distributing money to lure people to attend Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s rally in the poll-bound state.

A Facebook user shared the video with a caption in Hindi that can be roughly translated to, "BJP workers distributed money late at night to gather crowds at CM Yogi's rally in West Bengal."

The video is being widely shared on Facebook and Twitter with the same narrative. 

West Bengal assembly elections will be held in eight phases starting from March 27, 2021, to April 29, 2021, and the counting of votes will take place on May 2, 2021.

The truth behind the claim 

In our investigation, we found this claim to be false. 

With the help of reverse image search using the keyframes of the video, we found the same video uploaded on YouTube on October 17, 2019, with the caption, "Dhanbad: Two or two hundred rupees distributed to mobilize CM Raghubar Das gathering, video goes viral."

On analyzing the video, we found 'Abki baar 65 paar,’  text written on the T-shirts of the people seen in the video, which was the BJP’s tagline during the 2019 Jharkhand elections.

(BJP’s tagline during the 2019 Jharkhand elections)

We could not independently verify whether cash was handed out at the above rally, however, it is clear that the video is an old one and not related to the upcoming assembly elections in West Bengal. 

In conclusion, an old video from 2019 showing BJP workers distributing money to a crowd is being shared with a false claim  BJP is distributing money to lure people to attend Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s rally in the poll-bound West Bengal.