Viral Video Of Gagan Thapa’s Appeal To Vote For Balen Is AI-Generated

Claim
Nepali Congress President Gagan Thapa appeals to vote for Rastriya Swatantra Party candidate Balendra Shah.
Fact
Viral video is manipulated.

A video allegedly showing Nepali Congress President Gagan Thapa asking to vote for Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) candidate Balendra Shah is going viral on TikTok.

The video is going viral at a time when the country is preparing for the snap elections for the House of Representatives that will elect a new government after the violent Gen  Z uprising of September 8 and 9.  Thapa, who was elected Nepali Congress chief by a special general convention on January 15, has been declared as the party’s Prime Ministerial candidate if the party wins a majority in the elections. Likewise, Balendra Shah, who resigned as mayor of Kathmandu to run for election from Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) ticket, has been projected as the party’s prime ministerial candidate.

Against this backdrop, TikTok user @ai.nepa1 posted a video of Gagan Thapa appealing to vote for Balen Shah. Text superimposed on the video reads, “Gagan Thapa appealing to vote for Balen Shah.”

In the 29-second video, Thapa is heard saying, “My vote is for Balen Shah. Citizens who have gone crazy on seeing the sacrifices of the brave waiting for death instead of treatment. I have not been able to feel a healthy nationalism and an impeccable statesman, and my country has never been able to feel the spring after a cold winter. Vehicle tax, fear of parking. And the terror of police is as if jail is the second home. Somewhere the road is incomplete and somewhere the road is narrow.”

The video posted on February 11 has racked in 49.2k likes, 4451 users have shared it and 1050 people have commented until the last count.

The archived version of the TikTok video can be seen here.

Newschecker found the video to be AI-generated.

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 from the video led us to several videos (see here, here and here) bearing close resemblance to the viral clip.  

On checking a video, dated February 9, posted on Thapa’s own X (formerly twitter) account, we found that the clip was a video message regarding the hurdles faced by development projects due to lack of coordination among different state agencies.

We found that the clothes worn by Thapa in his video message exactly matched his clothes in the viral clip though we found the viral audio a little odd.

In a 7:15-minute long video message, Gagan Thapa underlines the systematic bottlenecks affecting the mega infrastructure projects. He also says that around three dozen laws need revisions. He assured to transform the country’s infrastructure sector in the next five years.

We found news reports on major credible media outlets based on the video posted by Thapa on his X. However, we did not find him uttering a single word about Balendra Shah or Rastriya Swatantra Party.

And why would Gagan Thapa appeal to vote for the Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) when his party Nepali Congress has not formed any kind of electoral alliance with the RSP?

We then downloaded the viral video and checked the video through the AI detection tool ‘Hive Moderation’ which indicated that the viral video is 98.3 percent likely to be generated by using AI.

Further, we took a key frame from the viral video and checked it through the AI detection tool wasitai. The result showed that the frame or a significant part of it was created by using AI.

We also checked the video by using another tool named ‘video detector’ which found face geometry inconsistency and eye position instability with an aggregate score of 69 percent, indicating significant signs of manipulation.

Thus, our findings clearly indicated that the viral video is deep-fake. 

Conclusion

No, Nepali Congress President Gagan Thapa didn’t ask to vote for Balen Shah. The viral video is AI-generated, and thus misleading.  

Result: Edited

Sources
Gagan Thapa/X, Feb 9, 2026
Setopati/YouTube, Feb 9, 2026
Hive Moderation
Wasitai
Video Detectator