Fact Check: No, Mayawati hasn't pledged support to BJP in UP assembly polls, viral video old
India Today
A video clip featuring BSP supremo Maywati has gone viral with the claim that she recently announced her party would support the BJP. The clip is from October 2020 when she said BSP will support any other party to defeat an SP candidate in MLC elections.
A video clip featuring Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Maywati has gone viral with the claim that she recently announced her party would support the Bharatiya Janata Party — or any other party — in pursuit of defeating the Samajwadi Party in the soon-to-begin assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh.
Several people shared the viral clip featuring the BBC’s logo on Facebook and Twitter, claiming this to be a recent announcement. In the viral clip, Mayawati read out a statement in Hindi: “The BSP will do everything to defeat the SP's second candidate. And to do this, if it is required for our party MLAs to sacrifice their votes to the BJP — or any other party — we will even do that.”
India Today Anti-Fake News War Room ( AFWA) found that this viral clip is from October 2020. At the time, Mayawati had said her party would vote for the BJP or any other party's candidate in the then-upcoming Uttar Pradesh MLC elections to defeat the SP's “second candidate.” In the ongoing election campaign in Uttar Pradesh, Mayawati has criticised both the BJP and the SP.
The viral posts are archived here and here.
Since the viral clip contained the BBC logo, with the help of keywords searches, we found the original video embedded in an article on the BBC website, published on November 2, 2020. This clip is over three minutes long.
The same viral clip was also tweeted by news agency ANI on October 29, 2020. The caption of the tweet read, “#WATCH BSP Chief Mayawati says that her party will vote for BJP or any party's candidate in future UP MLC elections, to defeat Samajwadi Party's second candidate. ‘Any party candidate, who'll be dominant over SP's 2nd candidate, will get all BSP MLAs' vote for sure,’ she said.”