A screenshot of a tweet about Ram Mandir purportedly by Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav is being shared on social media. However, we found that the screenshot is fake and the content of the same had never been tweeted by Yadav.
In its landmark verdict on 9 November 2019, the Supreme Court directed that Hindus would get the disputed land in Ayodhya subject to conditions. The inner courtyard would be handed over to a Centre-led Trust, and a suitable plot of land measuring five acres shall be given to the Sunni Waqf Board, the SC directed.
CLAIM
Translated, the tweet says that if Samajwadi Party were in power (in Uttar Pradesh), Yadav would have followed in Netaji’s (Mulayam Singh Yadav) footsteps and would never have allowed the Ram Mandir to be built, regardless of the loss of life.
According to the screenshot, the tweet was posted on 3 November 2019, just a week before the Ayodhya verdict was delivered by the Supreme Court on 9 November.
The context of the tweet seems to be the fact that on 30 October 1990, Akhilesh Yadav’s father and then Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav had given an order to the police to open fire at karsevaks who had come together in Ayodhya after being called on by the VHP, the RSS and the BJP.
WHAT’S THE TRUTH?
Using Twitter Advanced Search, we checked Yadav’s Twitter account for activity on 3 November 2019 but found none. There was no sign of the tweet which is being circulated now, neither was there any tweet on 3 November at all.
We also checked on Wayback Machine, a digital archive, and found that Yadav’s profile was archived on 11 November. We could see tweets from 2 November and 4 November in this, but no tweet was posted on 3 November.
Further, on checking Yadav’s profile over the next few days, till the verdict was actually delivered, we only found one tweet about Ram Mandir, in which Yadav appeared to be in favour of the judgment, saying that such decisions would help humanity.
In fact, according to a release, Akhilesh Yadav called the verdict “historic”, saying he hoped that everybody would maintain peace and not hurt feelings of any community.
Therefore, it is clear that the tweet being circulated now did not come from Yadav but is a morphed tweet.
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