Video of Rahul Gandhi saying he is resigning from Congress is manipulated

What is the claim?

A video featuring Congress Member of Parliament Rahul Gandhi has been widely circulated on social media. The video claims that he has resigned from the party in anticipation of the Lok Sabha elections, which are set to commence on April 19, 2024. 

In the video, which was shared on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, Gandhi is heard stating in Hindi, “I, Rahul Gandhi, am resigning from the Congress today. I cannot pretend to be a selective Hindu. After the Nyay Yatra, I released a ‘Nyay report,’ but Modiji is sending the corrupt to jail. Now under Modi’s rule, soon the corrupt among us will be sent to jail, and that is why I am going to my grandfather’s house in Italy.” Archived versions of the post can be found here. The video was also shared on YouTube, with an archived version available here.

Screenshot of the viral posts. (Source: Facebook/ X/ Screenshot)

However, the video has been manipulated using deepfake audio.

How did we verify this? 

Upon careful review of the viral video, we observed that the audio does not align with Gandhi's lip movements, suggesting that the video could have been tampered with.

A reverse image search led us to a video report by The Indian Express, uploaded on their YouTube channel on April 3, 2024. The video, titled ‘Rahul Gandhi Files Nomination Papers From Kerala’s Wayanad | Lok Sabha Election 2024,’ shows the same visuals from the viral video at the timestamp of 0:38 seconds, where he is seen holding and signing a document.

A keyword search directed us to the original video Gandhi shared on his X (formerly Twitter) account on April 3, 2024. In the caption, he stated that he filed his nomination from Wayanad, a constituency in the coastal state of Kerala, for the upcoming 2024 general elections.

In the video shared on Gandhi’s X account, he is heard saying, “I, Rahul Gandhi, having been nominated as a candidate to fill a seat in the House of the People, do solemnly affirm that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of India as by law established and that I will uphold the sovereignty and integrity of India.”

There has been no official announcement of Gandhi's resignation from the Congress. Such an announcement would have made national headlines, but we found no reports of any such action taken by him.

While the video in the viral post has not been edited, the discrepancies in the viral video and the differences between the original audio and the one in the viral post suggest that an AI voice clone tool has been used to propagate the false claim that Gandhi has resigned from Congress.

The verdict 

The viral video of Rahul Gandhi saying that he is resigning from Congress has been manipulated with fake audio overlaid. In the original video, he is seen signing the nomination paper from Wayanad, Kerala, and did not say that he is resigning from Congress. Therefore, we have marked this claim as fake.