Newschecker: As the Hyderabad Lok Sabha constituency goes to polls in the Phase 4 of the elections, multiple Telugu film stars such as Allu Arjun, Jr NTR, were seen lining up to cast their votes on Monday. In this backdrop, a video showing a voter reprimanding Megastar Chiranjeevi for jumping the queue at the polling booth has surfaced online. Newschecker found that the video dates back to 2014, and has been shared out of context.
Claim:
X user @alanatiallari_ shared the video, claiming, “.@KChiruTweets (Chiranjeevi’s X handle) and his son RRR actor @AlwaysRamCharan questioned by common man in polling booth for breaking line. good to see common man standing up and voice out these privileged. (sic)” In the video, a voter can be heard telling Chiranjeevi, “Do you need special treatment.. You should be in the queue.”
The post can be seen here.
Investigation:
On carefully analysing the video, we heard the anchor addressing Chiranjeevi as a Union Minister, raising our suspicion that the video might be old. The actor was the Union Minister of State for Tourism with independent charge from October, 2012 to May 2014.
Further, we noticed the watermark on NDTV on the top right corner in the footage.
Taking a clue, we looked up keywords “NDTV,” “Chiranjeevi,” “voter” and “reprimand” on Google, which led us to a report by the outlet, dated April 30, 2014. Carrying the footage, the report stated, “Actor-politician Chiranjeevi was censured by voters today when he allegedly tried to jump the queue at a polling station in Andhra Pradesh. The 58-year-old Congress politician came along with his son, daughter and wife to vote at a polling station in the Khairatabad assembly seat in Hyderabad, and went past a long queue of voters to walk right up to the front.”
We also found a report by Times Now, dated April 30, 2014, carrying the footage of a voter calling out the Telugu star for jumping the voting queue. It stated, “Actor turned politician Chiranjeevi landed in trouble as he stepped out to vote on Wednesday (April 30). While waiting to cast his vote at a polling station, he allegedly tried to jump the queue and was asked by a voter to return to his place and respect the voter’s queue.”
A report by The Hindu on the incident, identified the man reprimanding Chiranjeevi as Raja Karthik Ganta “who came all the way from London to cast his vote.” It added that Karthik said “he had been waiting for about one-and-half hours since 8 a.m. to cast his vote when he suddenly saw Chiranjeevi with a horde of TV cameramen in tow. He,then, noticed that his family members also followed him.” “I felt it was not fair because I am also a resident and he was also a resident,” he was quoted as saying.
Chiranjeevi had, however, said that he had gone directly to the booth to check whether his name was on the voter list. “I am not such a person (who will violate the law). I am a person who respects democracy,” the actor reportedly said.
Conclusion: We could thus conclude that an old video of a voter reprimanding Chiranjivi for jumping the queue at the polling booth has been misleadingly revived amid Lok Sabha Polls.
This story was originally published by newschecker, and republished by Lighthouse Journalism as a part of the Shakti Collective
