Social media is rife with a video of PM Modi’s interaction with a woman who denies having received benefits of schemes launched by the central government. The clip that is being shared online is 8 seconds long in which PM Modi asks the woman if she had received any benefits and the lady replies back that she had not received any benefits from the said scheme.
The video was shared by the official Twitter account of the Aam Aadmi Party. The caption to the tweet by AAP said: “The reason why PM Modi never addressed a press conference.”
The reason why PM Modi never addressed a press conference👇🏻 pic.twitter.com/54ZJDFpHJi
— AAP (@AamAadmiParty) October 5, 2021
The video was also shared by Congress functionaries. Hasiba Amin, National Convenor of Congress Social Media, also uploaded the clip on her Twitter account along with a moralising tweet.
“So this happened while PM was interacting with people from UP. Try to script and control narrative all you want, the truth does eventually come out,” Amin tweeted along with the video clip.
So this happened while PM was interacting with people from UP. Try to script and control narrative all you want, the truth does eventually come out. pic.twitter.com/XIVpIvrYEc
— Hasiba | حسيبة 🌈 (@HasibaAmin) October 5, 2021
Before long, the video was shared by a raft of social media users, asserting that the video is a testament to the fact that schemes launched by the Centre have not reached the intended beneficiaries.
Fact check: Edited clip of PM Modi’s interaction with PM Awas Yojana shared online
The video of PM Modi’s interaction with a woman that is being bandied around on social media websites by overenthusiastic Congress and AAP supporters and leaders is evidently an abridged version of a longer video in which the woman who denies receiving benefits under PM Swanidhi Scheme admits how she and her family had benefited from other schemes launched by the Centre.
The interaction took place on Tuesday when PM Modi participated in Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav, the celebrations organised to mark the 75th anniversary of India’s independence. He inaugurated ‘Azadi@75 – New Urban India: Transforming Urban Landscape’ Conference-cum-Expo in Lucknow and digitally handed over house keys to 75,000 beneficiaries of Awas Yojana in 75 districts of Uttar Pradesh and interacted virtually with beneficiaries of the scheme in Uttar Pradesh.
The PM interacted with three beneficiaries — Vimlesh of Agra, Ram Janki of Kanpur and Babita of Lalitpur — asked how their lives changed after they got houses under the scheme. During his interaction with Babita from Lalitpur, he enquired about her livelihood and her experience with the scheme. He also said he would ask Yogiji (CM Adityanath) to give him a “chance” to have food at her place.
Here’s the entire conversation of PM Modi with Babita of Lalitpur:
PM Modi asked Babita about her life before she built a pucca house under the PM Awas Yojana. Babita said, “We have had difficulties living in the kaccha house. There were water supply constraints, we could not cook proper food and there were mosquitoes and flies around…now those problems are solved after we built a pucca house.”
When PM Modi asked how much money and through what means she had received monetary help to build her pucca house, Babita said her family had received Rs 2.5 lakhs from the government right in their bank account and they had to pay no middlemen to procure the amount.
“We had launched Jan Dhan Yojana scheme to ensure poor people have a bank account and the subsidy amount could be directly transferred to the intended beneficiary. The technology plays a big role in alleviating problems bedevilling the poor,” said PM Modi and further asking Babita if her husband had availed benefits under PM Swanidhi Yojana for his occupation of rearing goats.
Babita, who was probably unaware of the scheme launched by the central government, said her husband had not received any benefits under the PM SWAnidhi scheme. PM Modi then went on to educate Babita on how she and her family could avail benefits under the PM SWAnidhi Yojana.
PM Swanidhi Yojana, a scheme launched by the Centre for providing affordable Working Capital loans to street vendors to resume their livelihoods that have been adversely affected due to Covid-19 lockdown.
Later on, PM Modi further asks Babita if she had received any benefits under the Ujjwala Yojana, a social welfare scheme aimed at distributing LPG connections to women below the poverty line. The woman instantly responds in affirmative, saying that she now cooks food for her family on gas. PM Modi then jocularly asked her what dishes does she cook for her children and said he would ask Yogi Adityanath to give him permission to have food at her place.
AAP and Congress shared conveniently cropped out video to malign the Modi government
The entire conversation with Babita is longer than 4 minutes but the usual suspects, in their bid to show the Modi government in a bad light, trimmed down the video to just 8 seconds to give an impression that the woman had snubbed PM Modi.
Congress and AAP conveniently edited out the part in which the woman lists down the benefits she and her family had received under PM Awas Yojana and PM Ujjwala Yojana to allege that beneficiaries are not receiving any of the benefits of the scheme launched by the central government.
It could be the case that Babita and her family were not aware of the PM SWAnidhi scheme or did not bother to avail its benefits. But the alacrity with which AAP and Congress leaders and supporters are sharing the spurious video indicates that they have little regard for the truth and they would even resort to sharing incomplete and manipulated videos to malign the central government.
