2018 video shared as BJP leader garlanded with shoes during 2024 general elections campaign

What's the claim?

A 24-second video showing a man being garlanded with shoes was shared on social media with a claim that this is how a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader was welcomed while he was campaiging for the ongoing 2024 general elections.  

The clip shows the man touching the feet of onlookers during his roadshow. As he bows down to touch the feet of an older man, he places a garland of shoes around the latter's neck. The video was shared on X (formerly Twitter) with captions such as, "#BreakingNews People gave special gifts to BJP leader #LokSabhaElections2024 #NoVote4BJP #ShameOnBJP #1stPhase (sic)." The post had garnered around 48,800 views at the time of writing this story.

Archived versions of these posts can be accessed here, and here.

Screenshot of X posts. (Source: X/Screenshot/Modified by Logically Facts)

However, this video predates the 2024 general elections. It is from 2018 and shows Dinesh Sharma, BJP's candidate for Dhamnod civic elections, receiving a garland of showed from a local. Dhamnod is a town in the Dhar district in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. Further, the BJP has nominated Savitri Thakur, not Sharma, as its candidate from Dhar for the ongoing 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

What we found

On conducting a reverse image search on the keyframes of the viral video, we found a news report published by NDTV on January 8, 2018. It carried a screenshot from the now-viral video. It detailed an incident where Dinesh Sharma, a BJP candidate for the Dhamnod civic election held in January 2018, was presented with a garland of shoes while conducting a door-to-door campaign.  

Screenshot from NDTV's January 2018 report. (Source: NDTV/Screenshot)

The NDTV report added that the person responsible for adorning Sharma with the garland of shoes stated he intended to bring attention to the severe water crisis in the region.

Dinesh Sharma’s comment

We found the same video uploaded on YouTube by the news agency Asian News International (ANI) on January 8, 2018. In this video, the segment from the 5-second mark to the 19-second mark shows the viral video.

At around 37-second mark, a reporter can be heard inquiring about the voters' apparent anger to which Sharma says, "This happens; no matter how much work is accomplished, there will always be some issues and frustrations. But these are my people and we will sit and figure this out. There must have been a reason for their dissatisfaction and I am like their child."

The verdict

The incident took place in Madhya Pradesh's Dhamnod in 2018 while Dinesh Sharma was campaigning for the local body elections. The incident has no connection to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.