Given Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s repeated non-attendance in response to summons issued by investigative agencies in various cases, a screenshot has surfaced alleging to be from a 2012 tweet by Kejriwal. In this tweet, he purportedly expresses frustration over leaders avoiding summons from investigative agencies regarding corruption allegations and suggests that leaders should resign when such allegations arise. This article aims to fact-check the authenticity of the screenshot.
Claim: Screenshot of Arvind Kejriwal’s tweet expressing his anguish over leaders avoiding summons from investigative agencies.
Fact: Arvind Kejriwal did not post any tweets regarding leaders evading summons from investigative agencies. The alleged screenshot displays inconsistencies in both the ‘date’ and ‘features’, indicating that it is likely digitally manipulated. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
Initially, conducting a Twitter advanced search with time and specific keyword filters failed to uncover any tweet matching the purported tweet. Additionally, we searched for archived versions of Kejriwal’s account to determine if he had shared this post in 2012 but subsequently deleted it. However, this search also yielded no relevant results, indicating that Kejriwal likely did not make such a tweet.
It’s worth noting that in 2012, Twitter had a character limit of 140 characters. Users were restricted from sharing content within this limit. Subsequently, in 2017, the character limit was doubled to 280. Additionally, following Elon Musk’s takeover, the limit was further extended to 4,000 characters.
Nonetheless, the viral screenshot depicting a supposed 2012 tweet contains more than 140 characters, indicating that it’s highly unlikely Kejriwal authored it, thus suggesting the screenshot has been manipulated.
Moreover, comparing the viral screenshot with an archived version of a random tweet by Virat Kohli from November 2012 reveals discrepancies related to formatting. The viral screenshot displays ‘like’ and ‘repost’ options, whereas the archived tweet shows ‘favourite’ and ‘retweet’ options instead. Additionally, the archived tweet follows AM & PM time conventions, which are absent in the viral screenshot. These differences strongly suggest that the viral screenshot has likely been digitally manipulated.
To sum it up, Arvind Kejriwal did not tweet in 2012 regarding leaders evading summons from investigative agencies.
