Fact-Check: That's a Tamil Poet's Kin, Not Nirmala Sitharaman's Father
The person in the video was KV Krishnan, the grandnephew of Tamil poet Mahakavi Subramaniya Bharathi.
Fact-Check: The person in the video was the grandnephew of Tamil poet Mahakavi Subramaniya Bharathi.
(Photo: The Quint)
A video of Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman meeting an elderly man is going viral on the internet.
The claim: Those sharing the video have claimed that the person in the video was Sitharaman's father and she was meeting him at her ancestral home.
"Simplicity at Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman's father's house. A father accords a royal traditional welcome to his daughter which she politely sidesteps and introduces her colleagues to her father," read the caption.
An archive of the post can be found here.
How did we find that out:
We conducted a reverse image search on one of the frames from the viral video and found the same video on Sitharaman's office's Twitter handle posted on 3 December 2022.
The caption of the tweet said that Sitharaman visited Siva Madam in Varanasi and interacted with the family members of Mahakavi Bharathiyar, including his 96-year-old great nephew Shri KV Krishnan.
Taking a cue from that, we conducted a keyword search and found a report on Press Information Bureau's website from 2 December. This mentioned that the finance minister visited key Tamil influence places in Varanasi, including Siva Madam on 3 December.
We also saw reports and tweets that showed other Union Ministers – Dharmendra Pradhan and S Jaishankar – meeting Krishnan in Varanasi.
Who is Sitharaman's father: According to her profile in the Department of Financial Services' website, her father's name is Narayanan Sitharaman.
However, we were unable to find any photographs of him nor could we find any recent news reports of them meeting.
Conclusion: A video of Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman meeting the grandnephew of a Tamil Poet was shared with a false claim.
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