A photo (here, here, and here) of Rahul Gandhi holding a book with a red cover is doing the rounds on social media, claiming he is holding the Constitution of China. We fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: The red book Rahul Gandhi is seen holding in this photo is the Chinese constitution.
Fact: This photo was taken during a public meeting held by Rahul Gandhi in Gadwal, Telangana. The red book he holds in this photo is actually the Constitution of India, not the Chinese Constitution. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
To check the veracity of this claim, we performed a reverse image search on the internet leading us to a few news reports that contained the same photo. Some (here and here)of these reports were about a public meeting held in Gadwal, Telangana, on 5 May 2024.
During his address at this election meeting held in the Nagarkurnool Lok Sabha Constituency, Rahul Gandhi displayed a pocket-sized copy of the Constitution of India.
We found( archive link) the same photo on the Press Trust of India’s website, with a caption that reads ‘… Gadwal: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi addresses during a public meeting for Lok Sabha polls in Gadwal, Telangana, Sunday, May 5, 2024. (PTI Photo)’
In his speech, which is available on the official verified YouTube channel of Rahul Gandhi, you can see him holding the Constitution of India at the 27:52 time stamp.
In this video, he can be seen showing the Indian Constitution after he says, ‘‘If the poor, backward classes, Dalits and Adivasis gained something in the country, it is because of this book, which is our Constitution.’’
This evidence contradicts the viral claim that he holds the Chinese constitution in this photo.
To learn more about the Constitution with a red cover, we performed a keyword search on the internet. Through this search, we found that a ‘Coat Pocket edition’ of the Indian Constitution by Gopal Sankaranarayanan, published by the Eastern Book Company (EBC), is available for sale online (here and here). This resembles the one held by Rahul Gandhi in the Gadwal meeting.
Further, Amit Shah, PM Modi, and the former President of India have also held the same pocket-size Indian Constitution in the past (here, here and here)
To sum up, a photo of Rahul Gandhi holding the Indian Constitution is falsely shared as visuals of him holding the ‘Chinese Constitution.’
