A post going viral on social media (here, here, and here) claims that the Waqf Board has laid claim to the land where Mumbai’s Siddhivinayak Temple is located. This post is being shared in the context of the 2024 Maharashtra assembly election. Let’s verify the claim through this article.
Claim: The Waqf Board claims ownership of the land where Mumbai’s Siddhivinayak Temple is located.
Fact: Posts about Waqf Board laying claim to the land where Mumbai’s Siddhivinayak Temple is located are fake. Pavan Kumar Tripathi, the temple’s treasurer, and Veena Patil, the Executive Officer, both denied the claim. Additionally, Marathi daily Sakal clarified on Instagram that the graphic attributed to them is fake and they have not published any such report. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
To verify the claim, we searched the internet using relevant keywords but found no official notice or credible news reports supporting the claim. Such a major development would be reported by all mainstream media, but no such reports were found.
A Google keyword search led us to a video in an X post (Archive link) dated 18 November 2024, featuring Pavan Kumar Tripathi, the treasurer of the Siddhivinayak Temple. In the video, he stated that no board can claim the temple, as it belongs to Hindus and will remain under their ownership.
We contacted him, and he confirmed to Factly that the claim circulating on social media was fake and that they had not received any official notice. We also reached out to Veena Patil, the Executive Officer of the temple, who shared the video of Pavan Kumar Tripathi denying the claim and dismissed it as false.
In the viral posts, we noticed the logo of the Marathi daily Sakal. We searched their social media handle and found a post on Instagram (Archive link) from Sakal, where they clarified that the graphic attributed to them is fake and that they have not published any report regarding the Waqf Board claiming ownership of the Siddhivinayak Temple.
Another viral post featured a watermark of Kreately.in, KreatelyMedia in the image. Upon searching for the social media handles, we found that these pages often post unfounded claims. Kreately had also posted three other graphics with unfounded claims, stating that the Waqf Board had claimed ownership of the Gateway of India, Taj Hotel, and Pune Municipal Corporation land. These graphics do not cite any sources or indicate that they are satirical.
Upon verifying these claims, we found a post (Archive link) by ShivSena Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray (UBT) on X dated 19 November 2024, which clarified that the viral claims were fake. The post also included a graphic from Kreately. The X post urged people to beware of fake news.
To sum up, the viral post that the Waqf Board claims the land of Mumbai’s Siddhivinayak Temple is fake.
