The Election Commission of India (ECI) has officially announced the schedule for the 2025 Bihar Assembly elections, and campaigning by all political parties is now underway. Amid this, a purported NDTV news card, allegedly quoting Home Minister Amit Shah, is circulating widely on social media (here, here, and here), claiming that party workers active on social media are surviving on the 5 kg ration provided by the government. Let’s verify the claim made in the post in this article.
Claim: NDTV reported Amit Shah as saying that party workers active on social media are surviving on the government’s 5 kg ration.
Fact: The viral NDTV news card attributing a statement about party workers surviving on 5 kg ration to Home Minister Amit Shah is edited. The original graphic was posted by NDTV on 01 November 2025 from the Election Changer Session in Patna, featuring a conversation between Home Minister Amit Shah and NDTV CEO and Editor-in-Chief Rahul Kanwal, and does not carry any such statement. NDTV, in a post on X, confirmed that the viral news card circulating online has been edited and is fake. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
To verify the claim, we conducted a Google keyword search using relevant keywords, but did not find any reports of Home Minister Amit Shah making such a statement. Neither NDTV nor any other media outlet has reported or quoted such remarks.
Upon closely reviewing the viral NDTV news card, we noticed that it contains the text “Powerplay” and “Bihar Assembly Elections 2025” in the top left corner. Taking this as a cue, we explored the social media handles of NDTV India and found identical graphics in the same format, quoting Amit Shah, posted by the NDTV Instagram handle in a thread on 01 November 2025. None of these graphics carried the alleged statement.
The post description stated that the graphics featured remarks made by Shah during the Election Changer Session while speaking with NDTV CEO and Editor-in-Chief Rahul Kanwal in Patna. In these graphics, Shah was shown praising Bihar and its citizens as being highly politically aware, citing development under Nitish Kumar, such as improvements in law and order and the expansion of highways, while criticising the Opposition for its stance against Special Intensive Revision (SIR).
We then compared the viral graphic with the original graphic and identified clear signs of manipulation. The punctuation used was unprofessional, with irregular exclamation and quotation marks. The font also appeared inconsistent with NDTV’s standard news cards. Additionally, the design did not match: the white background behind the text looked superimposed and was inconsistent with the actual NDTV graphics from Amit Shah’s interview.
We also reviewed Shah’s full conversation with Rahul Kanwal, which was published on the NDTV India YouTube channel on 02 November 2025. During the interview, Shah responded to questions on issues such as Maoism, infiltration in Bihar, economic crimes, the Bihar elections, jungle raj, and promises made by RJD leader and CM candidate Tejashwi Yadav. However, we did not find any mention of the alleged statement about providing rations to party workers.
On 03 November 2025, in a post on X, NDTV stated that the 5 kg ration remark attributed to Shah is fake. The channel clarified that the post circulating on social media is an attempt to spread misinformation by editing a screenshot from a recent event. NDTV added that the matter has been flagged and that appropriate legal action will be taken.
To sum up, the viral NDTV graphic claiming Amit Shah said party workers on social media survive on the 5 kg ration provided by their government is fake.
