CLAIM
A day ahead of the Madhya Pradesh elections, Bharatiya Janata Party IT Cell head Amit Malviya on Tuesday, 27 November, tweeted out a clip of Manmohan Singh, where the former Prime Minister can be heard saying “The governments of Madhya Pradesh and governments of Chhattisgarh were very good.”
Malviya, in his tweet, said:
The tweet had been viewed over 13,000 times, and had over 1,200 retweets at the time of writing this article.
TRUE OR FALSE?
The clip shared by Malviya has been edited mid-sentence without any context, thereby making it seem as though Singh were praising the current governments of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. Both states are presently ruled by the BJP.
“PM SHOULD MAINTAIN THE DIGNITY OF HIS OFFICE”
The entire clip, which has been shared by the Congress handle @INCIndia, is from the book release ceremony of “Fables of Fractured Times”, written by Congress leader Manish Tewari.
While the book was released by Singh, in the presence of former J&K Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah, the discussion that followed, was moderated by senior journalist Rajdeep Sardesai.
At the discussion, Sardesai questioned Singh on the “retainment of decorum in a polarised political environment.”
To this question, Singh, in his answer, said “My relations with the governments of Madhya Pradesh, the governments of Chhattisgarh were very good.” This can be accessed at 1:22 minutes in the above video.
This bit has been edited out by Malviya to make it seem as though Singh was praising the governments in the state, when in fact he was talking about his relations with the governments in the state when he was prime minister before 2014.
Singh also emphasised on the need for PM Modi to maintain the dignity of the office he holds, particularly when he visits states that are not ruled by his party.
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