Fact Check: 15-year-old video of Mayawati on 'Fundamentalist' Muslims shared out of context ahead of UP polls

A video of Mayawti has gone viral on social media, claiming that the Bahujan Samaj Party supremo has asked people to vote for the Bharatiya Janata Party rather than "radical" Muslim groups.

Days ahead of the first phase of the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, a video featuring Mayawati has been making the rounds on social media. The video was shared with the claim that the Bahujan Samaj Party supremo has asked people to vote for the Bharatiya Janata Party, instead of “radical” Muslim groups. The video was circulated with hashtags including #UPElections2022.

In this 30-second video, Mayawati can be heard saying, “The Muslim community prefers fanatics. To stop the fundamentalist Muslim’s wife from winning the elections, I asked them to transfer their votes to the BJP. In Meerut, scheduled caste people the Muslims didn’t; their votes went to the fundamentalists but upon my insistence, the scheduled caste, the backward caste, and the upper caste voters associated with us, they transferred their votes to the BJP. So that the fundamentalists don’t win the elections.”

The archived version of the post can be seen here.

India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found that the video in question is more than a decade old. Mayawati was speaking in the context of the 2006 Meerut municipal corporation elections.

With the help of a keyword search, we found the longer version of the same video in an ABP news report. According to this television news report shared by an unrelated YouTube account, the video was ten years old when it became viral again. The video’s title claims the comments were made by Mayawati on November 10, 2006.

In this longer version of the video, Mayawati can be heard saying, “You know that previously, the mayor of Meerut was for our party. So, why didn’t we win this time? That’s because that seat turned into a Hindu-Muslim tussle. And you know that people of the Muslim community prefer fanatics. The candidate of our party was also Muslim. But the one who left our party, the sitting MLA, made his wife contest the elections. You are well aware of his radical statements that led to Muslims joining him. His wife could have won the election. The candidate of our party was not a fundamentalist. To stop the fundamentalist Muslim’s wife from winning the elections, I asked them [voters] to transfer their votes to the BJP.”