Sambit Patra tweets fake video of Kejriwal praising farm laws

New Delhi: Twitter on Saturday flagged a tweet by BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra as "manipulated media" after the he shared an allegedly doctored video of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal purportedly listing benefits of new farm laws.

In the video clip shared by Patra, Kejriwal is heard saying that the new farm laws "will not take away your land, it will not take away your MSP, it will not take away your mandi and the farmer can now sell his crop anywhere in the country."

The clip was shared by Patra and many other BJP leaders.

This was, however, a doctored video, put together by compiling bits of an interview Kejriwal gave to a regional TV channel. Fact-checking website Alt News debunked the claim and reported that the clip was taken from an interview Kejriwal gave to Zee Punjab Haryana Himachal earlier this month.

तीनो farm bills के लाभ गिनाते हुए ...Sir जी: pic.twitter.com/nBu1u7gkS7

— Sambit Patra (@sambitswaraj) January 30, 2021

In the interview, Kejriwal said, "All their (BJP) senior ministers and chief ministers came to convince the public that this Bill was for the farmers’ benefit. I have heard all these speeches. What do they say in these speeches? They say that this bill will not take away your land, but this is not a benefit. The land is theirs anyway. Your MSP will not be taken away. That’s not a benefit either, it was already available. Your mandi will not be taken away. And this was also already there in the first place. So, what happened? Not a single leader is able to list the benefits."

He further says: "When you prod them further, they say that the farmer can now sell his crop anywhere in the country. This is the only benefit they mention, right? Now, the farmer will get good prices, he can sell anywhere outside the mandi. I want to ask the Centre directly with all due respect. Today, the MSP for one quintal of wheat is Rs 1,800 in the mandis of Punjab and Haryana. There is no mandi in Bihar, and farmers there are selling wheat for Rs. 800. This farmer that’s selling for Rs 800, can you tell him where he should go to get more than Rs 1,800 for his wheat outside of the mandi?”

This is not the first time that Twitter has flagged tweet by a BJP leader. Earlier in December last year, BJP leader Amit Malviya's tweet, a fact check on Congress' Rahul Gandhi, was labelled "manipulated media" by Twitter.

The posts in question had pertained to allegations of police brutality amid the ongoing farmer agitation in and around the national capital.

It is worth mentioning that the tweets, both by Patra and Malviya, have not been taken down.