Video of man hitting electricity board staff in Karnataka falsely linked to Congress’ poll promise

By: Rajini KG
May 29 2023

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Context
Days after Congress formed the government in Karnataka, a video that shows a man assaulting someone is being shared with the claim that an electricity board official, who came to take the power reading, was attacked by local residents. The video has been shared to take a dig at Congress’ poll promise of providing 200 units of free electricity to consumers. During the election campaign, Congress leader DK Shivkumar (now sworn in as the deputy chief minister) had made the promise.

Twitter user Rishi Bagree, who has been called out for spreading disinformation in the past several times, shared the video on May 24 and wrote, “Electricity officials are attacked by local residents in Karnataka when they came for meter reading. Residents says that they won't pay from electricity now onwards as per Congress Guarantee (sic)." The post had garnered over 1.6 million views and over 10,000 likes at the time of writing this story.

In Fact
We came across a video posted by ‘South First News’ YouTube channel of Koppal Superintendent of P (SP) Yashodha Vantagodi clarifying that the incident is from Kukkanapalli village from the district. He said the video shows one Chandrashekhar Hiremath physically abusing one Manjunath from Gulbarga Electricity Supply Company Limited (GESCOM). She added that the incident happened on May 23, 2023, over non-payment of more than ₹9,000 to the electricity board. The board had disconnected Hiremath's power supply but he allegedly restored it illegally. When this came to the notice of the authorities, Manjunath visited Hiremath's house, where the former was assaulted.

Logically Facts reached out to electricity employee Manjunath, who works with the power board, for further infomration. He said that on May 20, the electricity supply for Hiremath’s house was disconnected for not paying a bill of ₹9,990. On May 23, when GESCOM staff again went to collect the money, they found out that the electricity supply was illegally restored. They warned Hiremath and moved to the next house for collection. It was then that Hiremath launched a verbal attack on Manjunath and attacked him. He confirmed the incident had nothing to do with the Congress poll promise. “No, he (Chandrashekar) did not mention anything about Congress' free power promise," Manjunath told Logically.

We also found other videos of Manjunath speaking to news channels about the same issue. Clearly, the clash was only over non-payment of dues and illegal use of electricity.

The Verdict
Local police and the electricity board employee in the video have confirmed that the Kukkanpalli incident occurred while recovering the pending electricity bill payment from a consumer. It is being falsely linked to Congress's free power promise to mislead people. Therefore, we mark the video misleadfing.