An image of cheque, purportedly signed by Vijay Mallya and issued to the Bharatiya Janata Party is being widely circulated on social media platforms with the claim that Mallya had contributed Rs. 35 crores to the BJP before fleeing to London. Through this article, let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: A cheque for Rs. 35 crore was issued as donation to the BJP by Vijay Mallya in 2016 before he fled to London.
Fact: According to the information available on the Election Commission of India website regarding donations received by various political parties in the 2016-17 fiscal year, the BJP received a total of five hundred and twenty-eight crore rupees (Rs. 528,79,33,206) in donations. However, neither the name of Vijay Mallya nor the names of the companies related to Mallya are mentioned anywhere in the list of those who have given these donations to the BJP. Moreover, the signature on the cheque shared in the post is also not that of Vijay Mallya. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
To check the veracity of the viral claim, we conducted a relevant keyword search on the internet to determine whether Mallya has indeed given Rs. 35 crores to the BJP. However, we didn’t find any reliable reports stating that Mallya has contributed Rs. 35 crores to the BJP.
The cheque shared in the post was issued in the name of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in November 2016. We checked the Election Commission of India website to gather information regarding contributions received by the BJP in 2016. However, we didn’t find any contribution made by Mallya to the BJP in that report. According to the details provided to the Election Commission by the BJP, the party received a total of five hundred and twenty-eight crore rupees (Rs. 528,79,33,206) in donations during the 2016-17 fiscal year. However, neither the name of Vijay Mallya nor the names of companies related to Mallya are mentioned in the list of contributors.
We can observe that the name of the Bharatiya Janata Party was misspelt on the cheque shared in the post (‘Bharatiya Janata Party’ was misspelt as ‘Bhartiya Janta Party’). Moreover, the signature on the cheque shared in the post does not match with Vijay Mallya’s signature. Several news agencies (here & here) have also published articles reporting that the image of the cheque showing Vijay Mallya’s Rs. 35 crore contribution to the BJP is fake.
To sum it up, Vijay Mallya did not contribute Rs. 35 crores to BJP in the year 2016.
