Addressing a rally in Telangana’s Siddipet on April 25, in support of BJP’s Lok Sabha Poll candidate M Raghunandan Rao, Union Home Minister Amit Shah accused the Congress party of corruption and raised questions on the reservation policy of the state.

Amid this, a video of the Home Minister’s speech started making the rounds on social media, in which he could be heard saying, “If BJP comes to power, it will end the unconstitutional SC, ST, and OBC reservation.”

One social media user shared the video of Shah on Facebook, writing: “Will cancel ST, SC reservations if BJP govt is formed again: Amit Shah. #NoMoreBJP.” An archived version of this post can be seen here.

India Today Fact Check found that the viral video was doctored. The original video is from his rally held in Telangana in 2023, in which Shah announced that if the BJP is voted to power in the state, it will end the Muslim reservation.

OUR PROBE

With a keyword search, we found a video shared on the YouTube channel of NDTV back in 2023. The title of the video read: “Amit Shah Vows To Scrap Muslim Quota in Telangana.”

According to its description, while addressing a rally at Chevella near Hyderabad on April 23, 2023, Shah slammed religion-based reservations. Calling them “unconstitutional,” he vowed to scrap the reservations for Muslims in Telangana if the BJP formed the government in the state.

The colour pattern of the stage and the colour of the podium in this video match those in the viral clip. Additionally, Amit Shah could be seen wearing a scarf of the same colour and design in both videos.

The video of this rally was also shared on the official YouTube channel of Amit Shah on April 23, 2023. The part seen in the viral video can be found at the mark of 14:30 in the video. It is clear that Shah was not talking about scrapping reservation for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes. Instead, he talked about ending the 4 per cent reservation given to Muslims in the state. Contrary to the claim, he spoke about scrapping the reservation given to Muslims and reallocating it to the SC, ST, and OBCs.

It is noteworthy that Shah recently talked about ending the reservation given to Muslims in his rally in Telangana’s Siddipet on April 25.

Muslims in Telangana reportedly get 4 per cent reservation in education and employment under the category of Other Backward Classes. However, this quota doesn’t form a part of the existing reservation of OBCs but comes under a separate category called BC-E.

It is thus clear that an old video of Amit Shah was doctored to falsely claim that he talked about scrapping ST/SC/OBC reservation in a rally.

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