Unrelated Video Falsely Shared As RSP Chair Lamichhane Congratulating Gagan Thapa

Claim
Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) Chair Rabi Lamichhane congratulated Gagan Thapa on his election as the new president of Nepali Congress.
Fact
Viral video shows a 2023 clip of Lamichhane’s video message to the State Affairs and Good Governance Committee of the Parliament. 

A video allegedly showing Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) Chair Rabi Lamichhane congratulating Nepali Congress leader Gagan Thapa on his election as the new president of his party.

Gagan Thapa was elected unopposed as the president of Nepali Congress during the recently held special convention that was boycotted by the camp led by then-president Sher Bahadur Deuba.

Gagan Thapa was vocal in demanding a probe to look into Lamichhane’s hand behind embezzlement of various cooperatives funds in his capacity of managing director (MD) of now defunct Gorkha Media Network that operated Galaxy 4K Television. While Lamichhane was Home Minister in the CPN-UML and CPN (Maoist Centre) coalition, Thapa argued that evidence suggested Lamichhane siphoned millions of rupees to the Gorkha Media Network.

Against this backdrop, TikTok user @rabi.lamichhane96 posted a video message of RSP Chair Rabi Lamichhane. In the video, Lamichhane is heard saying, “Honourable president, cabinet ministers and office bearers of various bodies, and honorable members. As the matter is serious, I would like to ask for permission to put forth my views through a video, though I am in a foreign country. President.” 

Text superimposed on the video reads, “I extend my heartfelt congratulations to Gagan Thapa Jee on his election as the president of Nepali Congress party.” The video captions reads, “I am very happy that youth has been given space in Nepali Congress party, our fight is not with the youths but the grand old men who have been draining the country for the past 30 years.”

The video posted on January 16 has racked in 73.4k likes, 1040 users have shared it and 1994 people have commented until the last count.

The same video was also posted on a Facebook page named Nepal Travel Namaste claiming to show RSP Chair Lamichhane’s congratulatory message to Gagan Thapa.

Newschecker found the claim to be misleading.

Fact Check /Verification

To check the veracity of the claim, Newschecker split the video into several key-frames and ran reverse searches on them. A reverse search on a frame led us to an article, dated December 8, 2023, and posted TechPana online carrying an image resembling the frame from the viral clip.

On checking the article, we found that the article reported on the video message sent by Rabi Lamichhane to the State Affairs and Good Governance Committee of the parliament. The article noted that the committee refused the video message sent by Lamichhane regarding the formation of a five-member probe committee on the buy-out deal of private telephone company Ncell.

Further, we found the video, dated December 8, 2025, posted by Lamichhane on his verified Facebook page. On checking the video, we found that the first 24-second of the video exactly matched the viral clip. Lamichhane had written in his post that he was in Qatar and he wanted to ask a few questions to the parliamentary good governance committee regarding the tax of Ncell buy-out deal. He also noted that he posted the video on social media after the committee rejected his request.

Thus, our findings clearly showed that the viral video actually showed an old clip of Lamichhane’s video message to the parliamentary committee when he was out of the country in December 2023.

Conclusion

No, the viral video doesn’t show Rastriya Swatantra Party chair Rabi Lamichhane congratulating Gagan Thapa on his election as the president of Nepali Congress. The viral video is misleading.

Result: Misleading

Sources
Tech Pana, Dec 8, 2023
Rabi Lamichhane/Facebook, Dec 8, 2023