Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday, 6 August, announced that the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award will henceforth be known as the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award. This, he said, was done for "respecting the sentiments of citizens across the country”.
Following this, several politicians shared a photo of the PM thanking him for this, with the photo of the 'Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award' medal.
However, we found that the medal in the photo is of the Param Vir Chakra, the country's highest military honour.
CLAIM
The photo of the medal was shared by multiple leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and some news outlets.
In one of the tweets, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra thanked PM Modi and shared the image.
An archive of the tweet can be found here.
(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)
The photo was shared by former Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar, Lok Sabha MPs Satyadev Pachauri and BY Raghavendra, BJP MLA Abhijeet Singh Sanga, and Tamil Nadu BJP chief K Annamalai.
The photo of the Param Vir Chakra has also been shared by media houses like India TV news and Dainik Jagran and the archived versions can be found here and here.
WHAT WE FOUND
Several Twitter users pointed out that the medal was a Param Vir Chakra and not the Khel Ratna.
Upon a Google search of the image of the Param Vir Chakra, we found the image of the medal on the 'Indian Air Force' website and it looks like this.
Comparison of the two.
(Source: Twitter/ Indian Air Force)
We also found the image of the Param Vir Chakra medal on the website of Gallantry Awards – Ministry of Defence.
Next, we also looked for the images of Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award on Google and found it on Getty Images from 2012 with wrestler Yogeshwar Dutt holding it.
The Khel Ratna Award doesn't have any resemblance with the Param Vir Chakra.
Photo from 2012.
(Source: Getty Images)
Clearly, photo of the Param Vir Chakra has been falsely shared on social media as the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award.
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