A video of Congress leader Imran Masood is being widely shared on social media, in which he can be heard saying that the political contest in Uttar Pradesh is now directly between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP).
The video is being circulated amid the ongoing political discussions over the 2027 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, with users claiming that Masood recently said that Akhilesh Yadav’s leadership and the Samajwadi Party are the only way to defeat the BJP in the state.
A Facebook user posted the viral post with the following caption:
बहुत बड़ा बयान📍
यूपी के जो हालात हैं उसमें चुनाव सीधे सीधे भाजपा vs समाजवादी पार्टी हो गया है।
अखिलेश यादव का ऊर्जावान नेतृत्व ही अब प्रदेश के किसानों नौजवानों को बचा सकता है हमारे पास और कोई रास्ता नहीं है।
कांग्रेस नेता इमरान मसूद📍
Indian National Congress
Samajwadi Party— with Adv Lodhi Shivshanker Rajpoot and . See less
A very big statement📍
In the situation in UP, the election has directly turned into BJP vs Samajwadi Party.
Only the energetic leadership of Akhilesh Yadav can now save the farmers and youth of the state, we have no other way.
Congress leader Imran Masood📍
You can check the post here.
NM VERIFIED
NewsMobile investigated the viral post and found the claims to be false.
To verify the video, the NewsMobile team conducted a reverse image search using its keyframes. The search led us to a video report published by Aaj Tak on January 12, 2022, carrying the same visuals as the viral clip.
The original video was an interview conducted after Masood decided to leave the Congress and join the Samajwadi Party ahead of the 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections.
During the interview, when asked about his decision to switch parties, Masood said that the Congress had given him a lot of respect and that he had received affection from Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi.
However, referring to the political situation in Uttar Pradesh at the time, Masood said that the electoral contest had become a direct fight between the Samajwadi Party and the BJP. He further stated that the Samajwadi Party was the way to defeat the BJP in Uttar Pradesh.
The viral clip is an excerpt from this 2022 interview and is now being shared without its original context as if Masood made the remarks recently ahead of the 2027 Uttar Pradesh elections.
Further searches revealed that Masood’s political affiliations have changed since the interview. He left the Congress and joined the Samajwadi Party in January 2022. A few months later, he moved to the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), before eventually returning to the Congress in October 2023.
Masood’s recent statements also contradict the impression created by the viral video. Responding to Samajwadi Party MP Iqra Hasan’s recent remarks regarding the Congress-SP alliance, Masood defended the Congress and said that his party was not “begging” anyone for an alliance.
Therefore, we can conclusively say that the viral post, claiming Masood recently said that Akhilesh Yadav’s leadership and the Samajwadi Party are the only way to defeat the BJP in the state, is false.
