An old video of Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee president, DK Shivakumar, walking in an unsteady manner during the Mekedatu Padayatre in Karnataka, is circulating with claims that the leader was in an inebriated state during campaigning for the upcoming Karnataka assembly elections.
Several captions with the video have taken a dig at the Congress party for considering Shivakumar as the chief ministerial candidate in such an inebriated state.
Karnataka will go to polls on May 10, in a single-phased assembly election.
The video shows Shivakumar being surrounded by Congress party functionaries, as he walks unsteadily and almost trips and falls.
The video was sent to BOOM's Tipline number with the caption: Shivkumar, fully drunk during door to door campaigning hoping to be CM of Karnataka, if Congress gets majority in the ensuing Assembly elections.
The same video is circulating on Facebook with a similar caption.
Video from January, 2022
BOOM broke the video into its keyframes and ran a reverse image search on one of the frames. We were directed to a tweet from January 9, 2022, with the same video.
The video was uploaded by Karnataka-based news outlet NewsFirst Karnataka with the caption, "DK Shivakumar : ಸುಸ್ತಾಗಿ ತಟ್ಟಾಡಿದ ಡಿಕೆಶಿ | Mekedatu Padayatre | NewsFirst Kannada." The Kannada phrase translates to, DK Shivakumar is tired.
Defying COVID-19 restrictions, the Congress began its Mekedatu Padayatra (march) in January 2021 demanding implementation of the Mekedatu reservoir project across the Cauvery river. According to reports, FIRs were filed against Shivakumar as the march violated COVID rules.
BOOM however was not able to verify if Shivakumar was in an inebriated state when the video was shot.
According to reports, a video of former Lok Sabha MP VS Ugrappa and Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee media coordinator MA Salim allegedly talking about a 'scandal' involving Shivakumar surfaced in June 2021. In the video, Ugrappa and Salim can be heard accusing Shivakumar of taking bribes and stuttering while speaking as if he was drunk.
