Samajwadi Party’s veteran leader Mulayam Singh Yadav, a Member of Legislative Council from Auraiya, Uttar Pradesh passed away on 5 October.
However, social media users confused the MLC with his namesake, SP’s founder and former chief minister of UP. A spokesperson from the party confirmed with The Quint that the leader, Akhilesh Yadav’s father, was alive and well.
CLAIM
Several social media users shared the images of SP founder and former CM Mulayam Singh Yadav to announce the death of another SP leader and MLC, with the same name.
The claim was also updated on the Hindi version of Wikipedia and later taken down.
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
SP’s leader from Auraiya has passed away and not former UP CM Mulayam Singh Yadav.
The party’s Twitter account had also tweeted an image of their late leader to express grief over his demise.
Akhilesh Yadav, son of former UP CM, also tweeted an image, calling him a close aide of ‘Netaji,’
Speaking to The Quint, Anurag Bhadoria, a spokesperson for the Samajwadi Party, confirmed that the former UP CM was alive and well.
“The Mulayam Singh Yadav ji who passed away was a MLC from our party. Netaji is alive,” Bhadoria stated.
Aparna Bisht Yadav, wife of Mulayam Singh Yadav’s son Prateek Yadav, also took to Twitter to clarify that their ‘netaji’ was healthy.
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