Congress’ war room video viral as ‘Bengaluru IT firm celebrating Karnataka poll results’

Context

After the Congress won the Karnataka elections defeating the incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a video surfaced on social media claiming that employees at a Bengaluru IT office celebrated the party’s win. 

A Twitter user named Madridista shared a video and wrote, "Celebration at an Indonesian-based IT Co, @Anabatic_India Technologies in Bengaluru! We have to share this until it reaches their Co HR and if they can take action (sic)." In the video, people are seen raising slogans praising the Congress and mocking the BJP. The post has garnered over 1,700 likes and 1,20,000 views. In the comments section of the post, people criticized the company for allowing political celebrations within office premises. People have also left critical reviews on the company’s Google listing.

However, the claim made in the post is false. The people dancing in the video are not employees of Anabatic Technologies, but are part of the Congress’s war room, which was set up for the elections. 

In Fact

The claim that the people in the video were employees of Anabatic arose after a frame in the video partially showed the company’s logo on the wall. The letters ‘nabatic’ can be seen at 0.53 seconds. We looked up the company Anabatic Technologies, which has been tagged in the Twitter post. It is an Indonesian company, which has an office located in Jayamahal, Bengaluru. They have not shared such a video on their social media accounts. Logically Facts also visited the office in Bengaluru, which was based out of a co-working space, and a security official informed us that Anabatics no longer has an office there. He added that it moved to a different location before the elections. 

Some users in the comments claimed one of the people in the video is former IAS officer Sasikanth Senthil. Logically Facts went through his Twitter account and found that on May 13, he had posted a photograph of the Congress war room and the people working there as the votes for the Karnataka elections were being counted. We noticed that some people in the images he shared were the ones seen in the video. Sasikanth Senthil, a former IAS officer (Karnataka cadre), joined the Congress party in 2019 and was later named the head of the party's war room in Karnataka. 

We reached out to Senthil, who responded that the video was taken at the Congress war room in Bengaluru on May 13, after the results for the Karnataka elections were declared. “The celebration was at the Congress war room, not at any private company. The space is rental and had been previously occupied by many. The display board is an old one,” he told Logically Facts.

Another Congress war room member, Wasim Basha, shared the video on May 13 on his Twitter account.

A video showing similar celebrations, albeit from a different angle, was also posted by a user called Paul Koshy on Twitter. In a following tweet, he shared a photo with Sasikanth Senthil and wrote,"​Working with ex-IAS and Head of the War Room @s_kanth #ShashikanthSenthil was one of the most enriching experiences.” Koshy is one of the people seen in the picture of the war room members that was shared by Senthil.

More visual evidence

In a May 2, 2023 video broadcast, news channel India Today reported on the Congress War Room. India Today Executive Editor, Preeti Choudhry, spoke to Senthil and other war room personnel about the Congress’s data analysis and campaign strategy. This further proves that the office in the video is that of the Congress war room.

Another video, posted by News7 Tamil Prime on May 15, 2023, corroborated this. At 11:29 minutes into the video, we can see a man, who is also in the viral video, repeat the slogans as others dance along. 

The Verdict

A video of celebrations at the Congress’s election war room has been falsely shared with the claim that employees at a Bengaluru IT office were celebrating Congress’s victory and chanting slogans against the BJP. Therefore, we are marking this claim as false.