The ruling and opposition parties continued their debate over various issues, making the Lok Sabha session (July 1, 2024) a talk of national attention. In a 25-second video, BJP MP Anurag Thakur from Himachal Pradesh is seen challenging the opposition. MPs behind him applaud by pounding their desks as he asks, “How many pages are there in the Constitution? How many? Don’t say it’s ‘fat.’ Tell me, how many pages are there? You have been carrying it around every day. Haven’t you read it once? Whenever asked, you only say ‘Constitution,’ ‘Constitution,’ and ‘Constitution.’” He further confronts MPs from the INDIA group, stating that the party should apologise for declaring a state of emergency in the nation in 1975. Additionally, opposition MPs are shown intermittently in the popular video.
A Facebook post is shared with a claim, stating, “Rahul Gandhi could not tell how many pages are there in the Constitution. This is called answering Rahul Baba in his own language… Anurag Thakur”.
The above post can be seen here. (Archive)
FACT CHECK
NewsMobile fact-checked the claim, and found it to be misleading.
Searching with relevant keywords, the NM team identified the Sansad TV YouTube LIVE video, dated July 1, 2024, with a title: “Anurag Thakur’s Remarks | Motion of Thanks on the President’s Address in 18th Lok Sabha.” This video is 1 hour, 15 minutes, and 45 seconds long.
After watching the entire video, we found that the most popular segment is between the timestamps of 56:44 and 57:01. Notably, Rahul Gandhi is absent from the video during Anurag Thakur’s questioning of the opposition MPs. This indicates that the video has been altered and is being shared on social media with misleading information to defame Rahul Gandhi.
We also noticed that Anurag Thakur’s remarks about the “Samvidhan” (57:16) and the segment discussing the emergency (57:45) were taken from the video and edited together to create a viral clip that spreads misleading information.
According to the OutlookIndia report, dated July 3, 2024, a doctored clip of Anurag Thakur’s remarks appeared to suggest that Rahul Gandhi failed to answer the question. However, the Congress leader was not present in the House during the BJP leader’s speech.
The circulated video has been manipulated to include footage of Rahul Gandhi, falsely suggesting that he failed to respond to Anurag Thakur’s inquiries.
So, we can conclusively say that the viral claim that Rahul Gandhi couldn’t answer BJP MP Anurag Thakur’s query regarding the Constitution’s page count is baseless.
