Following India’s elections, a video of women queuing outside a bank circulated in social media posts that falsely claimed they were lining up to receive a cash hand-out from the opposition Congress party. While Congress promised financial assistance to poor families as an election pledge, the party did not win enough votes to form a government. The footage was actually filmed in April 2020, when crowds rushed to withdraw government aid from a bank amid false rumours the funds would be returned.
“Family members of Akbar, Babar and Aurangzeb in a queue for getting ₹8500/month under Rahul Gandhi‘s “Khatakhat Scheme”,” reads a post on X, formerly Twitter, from June 10, 2024.
Akbar, Babur and Aurangzeb were Mughal emperors. Hindu hardliners in India often refer to the country’s minority Muslim population as descendants of the Mughal dynasty.
On the campaign trail for just-concluded elections, politician Rahul Gandhi promised an annual cash transfer of 100,000 rupees ($1,200) to every poor Indian family if his Congress party was voted into power.
He told a rally the cash would be deposited into the bank accounts of one woman from every poor family “khatakhat” (immediately) — a term Gandhi’s critics have used to mock the policy.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi was forced into a coalition government after a shock setback in the polls left his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) without an outright majority for the first time in a decade.
The video made the rounds in similar posts on X and on Facebook here and here.
However, the video was filmed years before India’s 2024 election and shows customers of a bank lining up to withdraw money.
Bank rumour
A reverse image search on Google found a higher quality version of the video in an X post from 2021 (archived link).
At the 27-second mark of the video, the word ‘Muzaffarnagar’ appears on a billboard – referring to a city in Uttar Pradesh.
A keyword search on Google found the video in a report from April 20, 2020, by Hindi media outlet News18 (archived link).
The report is headlined: “Viral clip of crowds outside a bank in Muzaffarnagar, rumour of money being returned to accounts.”
Below is a screenshot comparison of the video shared in false social media posts (left) and posted by News18 in 2020 (right):
According to the report, beneficiaries of a government hand-out scheme rushed to withdraw money from their accounts amid a false rumour that a 500-rupee ($6) deposit sent to them would disappear if they did not withdraw it.
Weeks earlier, the government announced a 500-rupee transfer for three months to recipients of the scheme to help poor families during the pandemic (archived link).
India’s Department of Financial Services refuted false rumours that the cash would be lost if not withdrawn (archived link).
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