A screenshot of a Republic TV news report claiming that the Indian National Congress (INC) President Mallikarjun Kharge is in touch with the BJP is widely circulating across social media platforms. In this article, let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Indian National Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge is in touch with the BJP says Republic TV.
Fact: There are no reports about the Congress National President Mallikarjun Kharge being in touch with the BJP. According to several reports, fake screenshots of Republic TV reporting that Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi are in touch with the BJP went viral. However, Republic TV has clarified this issue through its Twitter handle, stating, ‘It has come to their attention that fake news has been propagated on social media by morphing their breaking news template.’ Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
Over the past few weeks, several Congress leaders have left the party ahead of the crucial 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Former Union Minister Milind Deora from Maharashtra joined the Shiv Sena led by BJP ally Eknath Shinde in Maharashtra. Soon after, former Maharashtra CM Ashok Chavan left the Congress party and joined the BJP. For the past few days, there has been speculation that senior Congress leader and former Madhya Pradesh CM Kamal Nath is likely to join the BJP. Amidst this, a post claiming that the Congress Party national president Mallikarjun Kharge is in touch with BJP is going viral on social media.
To verify the veracity of the viral claim, we conducted a relevant keyword search on the internet. However, we did not find any reports about such a development.
During this search, we found a news report published by Free Press Journal dated 18 February 2024. According to this report, fake screenshots of Republic TV reporting that Kharge and Rahul are in touch with the BJP went viral on social media. Republic TV issued a clarification regarding this.
Subsequently, we checked the official X(Twitter) handle of Republic TV, where we found a clarification by Republic TV on 18 February 2024, regarding this viral claim. The clarification post reads, “It has come to our attention that the Republic TV breaking news template has been morphed to peddle fake news on social media. This official Republic handle is the only platform to disseminate verified news by our English news channel. We are working with social media platforms to ensure fake news does not circulate using the brand logo of Republic.” From this information, it is evident that Republic TV did not report that Congress Party National President Mallikarjun Kharge is in touch with the BJP.
To sum it up, this viral screenshot of Republic TV reporting that Congress National President Mallikarjun Kharge is in touch with the BJP is fake.
