This video does not show Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman meeting her father - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
January 13, 2023
A video of the Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman meeting an older adult is being shared on social media claiming that the old man in the video is her father, Narayanan Sitharaman. Let’s verify this claim through this article.
Claim: Visuals of Nirmala Sitharaman meeting her father, Narayanan Sitharaman.
Fact: Nirmala Sitharaman visited Siva Madam in Varanasi and met the family members of Mahakavi Bharathiyar on 3 December 2022. The old man in the video is K.V Krishnan, the great-nephew of Mahakavi Bharathiyar, not Narayanan Sitharaman. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
To learn more details about the video in the viral post, we performed a reverse image search on a few keyframes of the video. This search led us to the official verified Facebook handle of Nirmala Sitharaman that uploaded the same video on 03 December 2022. Its description reads, ‘Siva Madam is the place where Mahakavi Bharathiyar stayed during his visit to Varanasi in the 1900s‘
To know more details about the people she met in Varanasi, we searched the internet with relevant keywords. In the process, we found a tweet from the official verified handle of Nirmala Sitharaman made on 3 December 2022. This tweet contains the photos and video of her visit to the Siva Madam in Varanasi. According to the tweet, she met the family of Mahakavi Bharathiyar, and the old man in the video is K.V Krishnan, the great-nephew of Mahakavi Bharathiyar. A day before this interaction, PIB posted an article about this which can be read here. This evidence makes it clear that the visuals do not show her meeting with her father.
Siva Madam is the place where Mahakavi Bharathiyar stayed during his visit to Varanasi in 1900s. #KashiTamilSangamam pic.twitter.com/EFR0dUUFqZ
To sum up, this video does not show Nirmala Sitharaman meeting her father. The man in this video is K.V Krishnan, the great-nephew of Mahakavi Bharathiyar.