In the wake of the Congress Party’s recent victory in the Karnataka Assembly elections, a screenshot allegedly depicting a tweet dated 13 May 2023 from Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif is being circulated on social media. This alleged tweet portrays Sharif congratulating the Congress Party on their win and expressing hope for their collaboration with the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI), a move he implies could bolster Islamic influence in Karnataka. In this article, we will investigate the veracity of this claim.
Claim: A tweet by Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on 13 May 2023 congratulating the Congress Party on their win in the Karnataka Assembly elections and suggested that they could work with SDPI to strengthen the influence of Islam in Karnataka.
Fact: Shehbaz Sharif has not made any such tweet related to congress victory in Karnataka or SDPI on 13 May 2023. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
We first searched the internet for any mention of this issue from reliable media sources in either India or Pakistan, but our search yielded no results. Then, we looked through the Twitter account of the Pakistani Prime Minister but found no tweet relating to the Congress Party’s victory in the Karnataka elections or about the SDPI dated May 13.
An archived snapshot of his Twitter profile from the same day also did not display any such tweet.
Furthermore, social media analytics tools like Truth Nest and Social Blade indicated that he made only three tweets on 13 May 2013, all of them concerning the internal affairs of Pakistan. These findings strongly suggest that the alleged tweet may never have existed, effectively ruling out the possibility of it being deleted.
To sum it up, a fake tweet allegedly from the Pakistani Prime Minister is circulating, which falsely credits him with congratulating the Congress Party on their Karnataka election win and proposing a collaboration with the SDPI.
