BJP leader Manoj Tiwari didn’t concede defeat against Congress candidate in ongoing Indian polls

What is the claim?

A viral video featuring Indian parliamentarian and actor Manoj Tiwari is circulating on social media platforms with the claim that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader has conceded defeat against the Congress candidate even as his constituency is yet to vote. The video features a Hindi text overlay that translates to, "Manoj Tiwari has accepted his defeat." In the 11-second clip, Tiwari, seated in a moving car, says, "Look, I was aware of my defeat, but the sad thing was that I had been winning for a long time, and then I felt like I was about to lose (translated from Hindi)."

On X (formerly Twitter), the video was shared with captions such as: "The dancer accepted defeat even before the elections, how will he cross 400 like this? Brother @kanhaiyakumar is amazing." One such post garnered over 39,000 views at the time of writing. Archived versions of these posts can be found here and here.

Tiwari is contesting the Lok Sabha elections from the North East Delhi constituency, which he also represents as the current Member of Parliament. The constituency will go to polls on May 25, when Tiwari will face Kanhaiya Kumar, a Congress leader and former president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union, among other candidates.

Screenshots of the viral posts. (Source: X/Modified by Logically Facts)

However, a video from 2009 has been misinterpreted to show Tiwari's purportedly accepting defeat against Kanhaiya Kumar.

What did we find?

Upon spotting the 'Jist' watermark in the viral video, we tracked its extended version on the Jist YouTube channel. This video (archived here) was uploaded on March 31. The video, titled "I Spent A Day With Manoj Tiwari To Discuss Pyar, Cricket, Rahul Gandhi, Modi & Kejriwal | Part-1," runs for about 1 hour and 11 minutes. The viral segment appears between the 34:04 mark and the 34:14 timestamps.

Source: YouTube

The video is of Tiwari interacting with a journalist, and around the 28-minute mark in this clip, Tiwari delves into the 2009 general elections. He mentions that he was initially unaffiliated with any party and even campaigned for money for his now-rival Congress in Lucknow. Tiwari recounts how Amar Singh, a politician who served as the general secretary of the Samajwadi Party (SP), brought him into his party. 

At around the 31:10 mark, Tiwari says that despite initial hesitation, he agreed to contest the election as an SP candidate after being urged by Amar Singh at a gathering that included actor Amitabh Bachchan and businessman Anil Ambani.

Further, Tiwari recalls his hesitance to contest the 2009 elections against BJP leader Yogi Adityanath in Gorakhpur due to his past affiliation with Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the saffron party. He also narrates an incident where he fled to Mumbai during the campaign to evade facing Adityanath and the fear of inevitable defeat, only to be apprehended and returned.

Then, around the 34:04 mark, Tiwari says, "Look, I was aware of my defeat, but the sad thing was that I had been winning for a long time; I felt like I was about to lose." He then says, "But even in that defeat, there was a victory because of Yogi Adityanath, who stood for Hindu culture, civilization, and Sanatan culture….We didn't know that Narendra Modi would become the country's prime minister at the time. I'm talking about 2009. In 2009, you could see there was a situation of complete political instability throughout the country." This bit where it is clear that he was referring to the 2009 elections has been omitted from the viral clip to make it appear that he conceded defeat in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections.

2009 general elections

Tiwari began his political career in Gorakhpur in 2009 when he ran as a candidate for the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh. He was contesting against Yogi Adityanath— now the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh—who had consistently represented Gorakhpur in the Parliament since 1998, as reported by NDTV. However, Tiwar was unsuccessful in his bid for Parliament at the time, securing only around 83,000 votes. Yogi Adityanath had then garnered over 4 lakh votes, and Bahujan Samaj Party's Vinay Shankar Tiwari received 1.82 lakh votes. Tiwari first won the Lok Sabha election in 2014 after joining the BJP.

The verdict

In the original video, Tiwari discusses the 2009 general elections, which he had contested against Yogi Adityanath in Gorakhpur. This specific interview segment has been cropped out and shared out of context to claim that he has already conceded defeat in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.