A post which states that Sudhir Chaudhary, consulting editor of media organisation Aaj Tak, has resigned is being shared on social media platforms.
What have users said?: The post was shared with a caption that said, "Senior Editor Sudhir Chaudhary resigned from Aajtak. He said Kicked by same foot the one you have been licking for years is hurts my self respect : Sources."
The claim was shared by an account which had the username of the news agency Asian News International (ANI).
An archive of the post can be found here.
(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)
You can view archives of similar claims here, here, and here.
Why is the claim being shared?: In a recent interview, Chaudhary was seen interacting with Union Cabinet Minister Smriti Irani. While talking about the rising prices of tomatoes, Chaudhary asked Irani if the prices affected her household too?
The minister responded by saying that he was trying to trivialise the issue. The anchor said, "This is called whataboutery..."
Irani interrupted Chaudhary and said, "This is not whataboutery. Even I can ask, Sudhir ji, what happened when you were in jail."
However, Irani later apologised for making personal remarks.
What is the truth?: The post was uploaded from an impostor account of Asian News International (ANI), which social media users later picked as a real incident. We did not find any information on Chaudhary resigning from Aaj Tak.
How did we find out?: While the post carried ANI's news flash image and its name, one closer look showed that the handle was called "@Hii_Nitish".
The post was not made from the official account of ANI.
(Source: Viral image/Screenshot/Altered by The Quint)
We searched for the handle and came across the post uploaded on 21 August. The user was named 'Nitish Pathak'.
Further, we looked for previous archives of the post and found that the account was formerly named as ANI.
The post had 95,000 views when it was archived.
(Source: Archive today/Screenshot)
ANI's real account: The media agency goes by the handle '@ANI' on X (formerly Twitter). While the agency joined the platform in August 2011, the parody account had joined a year before.
ANI has a gold tick next to its name.
(Source: X/Screenshot)
No information on Chaudhary resigning: A keyword search on Google did not show any report confirming the same. We did not find any official confirmation on Chaudhary's social media accounts as well.
However, we found a post on his X account asking users to watch the replay of his show 'Black & White' in case they missed it.
We have reached out to Aaj Tak for a comment on the claim and the copy shall we updated once we get a response from them.
Conclusion: It is clear that the claims about Sudhir Chaudhary resigning from Aaj Tak is false.
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