A post is being shared on social media with a claim that UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has cancelled his visit to India due to the current farmers’ protests in the country. UK PM Boris Johnson was supposed to visit India as the Chief Guest of the forthcoming Republic Day celebrations. Let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: UK PM Boris Johnson has cancelled his Republic Day visit to India due to the current farmers’ protests in the country.
Fact: UK PM Boris Johnson’s Republic Day visit to India has been cancelled due to the current COVID-19 situation in the UK; not due to the current farmers’ protests in India. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
When we searched about Boris Johnson cancelling his visit to India, many news articles on the topic were found in the search results. Multiple news agencies have reported that UK PM Boris Johnson has cancelled his visit due to the current COVID-19 situation in the UK. Some of the news reports can be found here, here, and here.
The official Twitter handle of ‘High Commission of India – London’ has tweeted a link to a press release by PMO regarding a telephonic conversation between India PM Modi and UK PM Boris Johnson on Tuesday. In the press release, it can be read – ‘Prime Minister Johnson reiterated his thanks for India’s invitation for him as the Chief Guest of the forthcoming Republic Day celebrations, but regretted his inability to attend in view of the changed COVID-19 context prevailing in the UK. He reiterated his keenness to visit India in the near future’. So, the visit was not cancelled due to the current farmers’ protests in India.
The tweets made by the UK government on their current COVID-19 situation can be seen here. UK PM Boris Johnson has also announced a nationwide lockdown.
To sum it up, the cancellation of UK PM Boris Johnson’s Republic Day visit to India due to the current COVID-19 situation in the UK has been falsely linked to farmers’ protests.
