Video of Himachal Pradesh politician shared as Nepali MP criticizing Indian PM Narendra Modi

What is the claim?

A video of a man speaking in what appears to be either the Parliament or a State Assembly is being shared widely on social media platforms with a claim that a Nepali parliamentarian criticized the policies and actions of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The video shows the person chiding Modi for his economic policies, foreign trips, and unemployment, among other things.

One user shared ther video on X (archive here) with a caption in Hindi that read, “नेपाल सांसद ने नेपाल की संसद में मोदी के बारे में जो कुछ कहा हर भारतवासी जब भी वोट डालने बूथ पर जाएं तो यह वीडियो जरूर देखना चाहिए और अपने मोबाइल फोन के सभी व्हाट्सएप नम्बरों पर शेयर भी जरूर करना चाहिए. ( Whatever Nepal MP (Member of Parliament) said about Modi in the Parliament of Nepal should be watched by all Indians before they go to cast their vote. They should also share it on all WhatsApp numbers on their mobile phones.)"

This post alone had amassed over 2,58,000 views and was reshared more than 5,000 times at the time of publishing. Archived versions of other such X posts can be accessed here and here.

The video, which is more than four minutes long, is also viral on Facebook with the same narrative. Archived versions of such posts can be accessed here, here, and here.

Screenshots of false claims made online. (Source: Facebook/Modified by Logically Facts)

However, the person seen in the video is not a Nepali MP but a Congress leader from Himachal Pradesh. 

What's the truth?

Upon researching, we found that the same video was shared on Facebook by the Indian National Congress' Himachal Pradesh page on March 21, 2021. When translated from Hindi to English, the accompanying caption read, "Hear from Kinnaur Congress MLA Jagat Singh Negi about the great and successful Prime Minister of the country."

Clearly, the person seen in the video is not any Nepali MP but Jagat Singh Negi, Congress leader and Member of Legislative Assembly from Kinnaur, Himachal Pradesh.

Furthermore, around the 1:57 timestamp in the viral video, the speaker of the house can be heard asking the politician to speak about the "state's budget."

Using this information as a clue, we looked for the video on the Himachal Pradesh Vidhana Sabha's official website for the "March 2021 Budget Session." We came across a 25-minute recording of an Assembly session from March 15, 2021. The video's title read, "Edited Video of Question Hour of H.P. Vidhan Sabha Budget Session dated 15/03/2021." The video is from the question hour regarding the annual fiscal budget released by the state in March 2021. 

Although there isn't a clip of Negi's speech criticizing Modi on the official website of the Himachal Pradesh State Assembly, visuals from the video of the aforementioned Assembly session matched the visuals from the viral clip. We can spot Jagat Singh Negi wearing the same clothes and sporting the same green-grey cap, a traditional Himachali headgear, around the 20:12 timestamp of the 25-minute video shared on the Himachal Pradesh Vidhana Sabha website. 

Comparison of visuals from the video Himachal Pradesh Vidhana Sabha website and the viral clip. (Source: X/Himachal Pradesh Vidhana Sabha/Screenshots)

This confirms that the viral video is of an old session from the Himachal Pradesh Assembly and is unrelated to Nepal.

The verdict

An old video of Congress MLA Jagat Singh Negi is being shared to falsely claim that a Nepali parliamentarian criticized PM Modi.