Fake Notification Passed off as Govt Announcing Panchayat Elections in J&K

J&K's CMO clarified on X that the viral notification was fake.

Fact-Check | The notification is fake and dates of panchayat elections in J&K have not been announced yet.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

A notification purportedly issued by the Jammu and Kashmir government is doing the rounds on social media claiming that panchayat elections have been announced in the state after November.

An archive of the post can be found here.

(Source: X (formerly Twitter)/Screenshot)

(Archives of similar such claims could be accessed here, here, and here.)

What are the facts?: The notification is fake. No such announcement for the panchayat elections in Jammu and Kashmir has been made by the government.

Discrepancies in the viral image: On going through the notification, we found several spelling mistakes such as "eection", "pacilitate", and "announcoment".

• These discrepancies indicated towards the possibility of the viral image being a fake one.

The notification had multiple spelling mistakes.

(Source: Viral image/Screenshot/Altered by The Quint)

No information in public domain: We checked the official website of J&K's Rural Development Department and Panchayati Raj, however, we did not find any such government notification that talked about panchayat elections.

• Further, there were no news reports about the announcement of elections.

A comparison: Team WebQoof compared a notification issued in 2018 announcing the panchayat elections to the viral image and found a glaring difference.

• The notification in 2018 was signed by the Chief Election Officer of J&K and not the secretary to government (Rural Development Department and Panchayati Raj) as seen in the viral image.

Authentic notifications are signed by a different authority.

(Source: X/CEO J&K/Altered by The Quint)

CMO clarifies: The official X handle of J&K Chief Minister's Office clarified that the viral notification is fake. The post shared on 5 August was captioned, "Fake news alert".

Conclusion: Evidently, the notification is fabricated and no such announcement for panchayat elections has been made for J&K.

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