A photograph of Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde with Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) president Sharad Pawar is being shared on social media to claim that the two met recently.
Several users took a dig at Shinde, who at the time of his rebellion had asked the then Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray to walk out of the alliance with Congress and NCP, calling it an "unnatural alliance."
However, we found that this image of the duo is from November 2021, when Shinde had met Sharad Pawar at his residence in Mumbai. In fact, after this picture went viral, Shinde clarified stating that no meeting between the duo has taken place and asked the people to not "believe in rumours."
CLAIM
Sharing the photo, a user on Facebook wrote, "This is the same Eknath Shinde who spoke to Uddhav Thackeray about breaking the alliance with the NCP."
An archived version of the post can be seen here.
(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
On conducting a simple reverse image search on the image we came across a tweet by the official Twitter handle of NCP, which had posted the image on 11 November 2021.
The photo caption mentioned that Shinde, then urban development minister met Pawar at his residence in Mumbai.
As the photo went viral now, it sparked off rumours of a 'secret meeting' between the two, following which Shinde took to Twitter to clarify that no such meeting took place.
"My photo with NCP chief Sharad Pawar is being made viral. There was no such meeting. Please don't believe in rumours," Shinde tweeted.
Clearly, an old photo of a meeting between Sharad Pawar and Eknath Shinde is being shared to claim that the duo met recently.
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