On January 18, Aam Aadmi Party announced Bhagwant Mann as its chief ministerial candidate in Punjab ahead of the upcoming assembly elections in the state. In this backdrop, a video has surfaced on social media platforms showing Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal praising Mann for pledging to quit alcohol. The captions with the video suggest that Mann has promised to quit alcohol from January 1, 2022.
A Facebook user shared the video with a caption, “Indeed Bhagwant Mann has given the biggest sacrifice in political history for people of Punjab. He has promised not to touch liquor for 1st Jan….Strange Isn’t it ??? Who else has given such Sacrifices.”
The video is doing rounds on Twitter with a similar caption.
FACT CHECK
NewsMobile fact-checked this video and found it to be shared with a misleading claim.
With the help of a relevant keyword search, we found Arvind Kejriwal’s speech in a news report by OneIndia Hindi uploaded on YouTube on January 21, 2019.
“Arvind Kejriwal On Bhagwant Mann ‘NO Drinking Promise’. Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) lawmaker Bhagwant Mann, who has often been accused of drunken behavior in public, revealed on Sunday that he had given up drinking on his mother’s advice. And promptly got a back-slapping endorsement from party chief Arvind Kejriwal, who called it a “big sacrifice”, reads the description.
On checking further, we found multiple news reports on Bhagwant Mann’s pledge to quit alcohol. Mann and Kejriwal made references to this development while addressing a rally in Barnala in January 2019 in the run up to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
According to a Hindustan Times report, Mann promised to quit drinking in the presence of Kejriwal and his mother. “The Shiromani Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party (SAD-BJP) coalition and the ruling Congress are in cahoots to malign my image by portraying me as a born drunkard. They have stooped to the level of showing old videos to defame me. It’s the only fault they find in me. Therefore, I have decided to quit drinking,” the report quoted Mann as saying.
AAP leader Manish Sisodia also tweeted about the same.
Therefore, it can be concluded a three-year-old video is being falsely shared as recent ahead of the Punjab assembly elections.
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