Did Pranab Mukherjee Say Anti-National Cong Won’t Win 2019 Polls?

“The post is undoubtedly made up and the claims made are stupid,” Pranab Mukherjee’s office said

(Photo Altered By The Quint)

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One of the most common modus operandi of peddling fake news is to falsely attribute random quotes to eminent personalities. These posts often carry images of such personalities as well, probably in a bid to lend legitimacy to these posts.

The Quint came across one such post related to former President Pranab Mukherjee.

CLAIM

A post put up by Facebook page Royal Hindu Youth made some outrageous claims about Congress, attributing them to Mukherjee.

The text in the post roughly translates to: “In 2014, Congress was reduced to 44 seats due to its corrupt image. Now it has the image of an anti-national party and will be decimated in 2019.”

TRUE OR FALSE

The claim is outright false. Authentic sources confirmed that the former President has not said anything on these lines.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

At the time of writing this article, the post had been shared more than 1,800 times on Facebook.

The Quint reached out to Pranab Mukherjee’s office which rejected the claims outright.

“The post is undoubtedly made up and the claims made are stupid,” Mukherjee’s office said.

“There are a number of posts of this type circulating on social media. A lot of these quote the former President from his book The Coalition Years. But that book has accounts only up till 2012. So, there is no way he could have made these claims even in that book. Whatever else he has said, is available in the public domain,” the ex-President’s office further clarified.

EX-PRESIDENTS: FAKE NEWS PURVEYORS’ FAVOURITE?

This is not the first time that Mukherjee has become the victim of the fake news menace. Earlier too, The Quint had busted social media posts falsely attributing former Presidents Pratibha Patil and Pranab Mukherjee.

Back then, the posts had claimed that Patil had said that “Narendra Modi is the only person who can transform India into a better country”. The post related to Mukherjee had quoted him as saying that “Congress would have destroyed India, if Narendra Modi would not have become the Prime Minister”.

Both the claims were found to be fake. Read more on that story here.

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