Jaipur: Congress' tweet on PM Narendra Modi rally backfires, video four month old

In yet another incident of political parties falling prey to fake social media posts, the Congress on Saturday evening posted a video of black flags being shown to Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his rally in Amrudon ka Bagh in Jaipur.

The 2.21-minute-long video was posted by various Congress handles hours after PM Modi had left Jaipur on Saturday. The official handle of the Congress posted a longer version at 7:19 pm which was reposted by several Congress leaders including Sachin Pilot.

The messages accompanying the tweets spoke about the inability to upload the video on Facebook, decried claims of BJP's rally success, and claimed that the BJP has lost its connect with the people.

All seemed well, except the video in question was from another PM rally that took place four months ago in Jhunjhunu.

The video had resurfaced late on Saturday afternoon on various social media platforms and was subsequently picked up by the Congress.

BJP's IT head Amit Malviya dubbed Congress' move a self-goal and tweeted, "Congress scores a self goal (as always) on Twitter. Claims a 5-month-old video is from the Prime Minister's rally in Jaipur on Saturday."

In response to this, Divya Spandana from Congress social media and communications cell, tweeted, "Apologies: apparently this video is from March and not yesterday...gosh Rajasthan BJP lost it that long back??"

While this is not the first incident of political parties falling prey to fake videos, the incident serves to reinforce the Congress's disconnect with the ground situation in Rajasthan and also raises questions about its own approach in taking on the ruling party.