A video going viral on social media (here, here, and here) shows a man using the national flag to clean a table. The post claims that the video features the Deputy Registrar of Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh, insulting the national flag. Let’s verify the claim made in the post through this article.
Claim: Video shows the Deputy Registrar of Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh using the national flag to clean a table.
Fact: The incident of a government official wiping a table with the national flag took place in October 2022 in Puri, Odisha. Prashant Kumar Swain, the Executive Officer of Simili Panchayat in Puri, was arrested by the police for violating the Flag Code of India by using the national flag to clean the table in his office. The Fact Check Wing of the Government of Andhra Pradesh clarified that the video is from Odisha, not Anantapur. Hence, the claim made in the post is Misleading.
To verify the claim, we conducted a Google keyword search, which led us to reports (here and here), archived (here and here), from January 2023, featuring a screenshot of the same viral video. According to reports, the person using the national flag to clean a table is Prashant Kumar Swain, the Executive Officer (EO) of Simili panchayat under Gop block in Puri district, Odisha. However, when the video went viral on social media, Prashant Kumar Swain admitted his mistake and apologised for his actions in front of the media. The incident took place in Odisha and is not connected to Andhra Pradesh.
According to a report by The Times of India (archived) dated 13 January 2023, the police registered a case against Prashant Kumar Swain for an incident that occurred in October 2022 at the Simili gram panchayat office, under the Konark police jurisdiction. The report states that a meeting was scheduled to take place in the panchayat office. Shortly before the meeting began, Swain, the Panchayat Executive Officer (PEO), noticed dust on the chairs and tables. He took the national flag from the panchayat office and used it to wipe the furniture. The incident was recorded on video by a ward member.
We also found an X post (archived) from the official account of the Fact Check Wing of the Government of Andhra Pradesh, dated 23 January 2023. The post clarified that the video is not from Anantapur, but from Odisha. It also mentioned that many misleading tweets and posts featuring the same video in Telugu had been identified and sent for further action. The post highlighted that spreading fake narratives is a legal offence.
To sum up, an old October 2022 video of the Panchayat Executive Officer in Odisha cleaning a table with the national flag is falsely shared as that of a Deputy Registrar from Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh.
