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| - Fact Check: Man in viral post is not Rajesh Tiwari who 'failed UPSC', but a Bangladeshi influencer
A social media post has gone viral, claiming that a 29-year-old man from Lucknow failed the UPSC exams due to the reservation system. India Today's Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found the claim to be false.
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India Today Fact Check
The man in the image is Sayeed Rimon, a social media influencer and textile engineer from Bangladesh. The image was clicked as part of a campaign on unemployment in Bangladesh.
A social media post is going viral with a claim that 29-year-old Rajesh Tiwari, a civil service aspirant from Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, who despite scoring 643 in UPSC Civil Service exam, has “failed” because the “cut off for General Category was 689 this year”. The post is accompanied by a picture of a man crying, holding a file in his hand.
The post goes on to criticise the reservation system in the country saying “for SC/ST it was 601. So according to this the one who have got 601 will become our next bureaucrat (sic).” A verified Facebook user has also posted the same and the post can be seen here.
India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) found that the claim is false and the man in the photo is not Rajesh Tiwari but Sayeed Rimon, a Bangladeshi social media influencer. The photo was clicked as part of an unemployment campaign.
Similar posts with hashtag "BAN_CASTERESERVATION" are also viral on Twitter and have sparked a debate on the reservation system in India.
The archived versions of similar posts can be seen here and here. Interestingly, the viral post has been in circulation on social media since at least 2017.
AFWA probe
AFWA reached out to Rimon via Facebook, who said, “Twelve years ago, I lost someone I was close to in a road crash. Since then, I have been doing multiple awareness programs. My photo that is in circulation now was clicked in November 2016 as part of a campaign on the unemployment crisis in Bangladesh.”
The original image was uploaded by Rimon on his Facebook profile on November 30, 2016.
We did a reverse image search of Rimon’s photo and found the same photo carried by multiple Bangladeshi websites. He can be seen in various different avatars like a pickpocket or a rickshaw puller here for different campaigns.
BBC Bangla has also done a profile on his awareness campaigns about various issues, which can be seen here.
After his image was used by various Indian users with the viral claim, Rimon had clarified many times that it was him in the photo and that he is a Bangladeshi.
A collage of Rimon in various avatars can be seen below.
‘Rajesh Tiwari who lost UPSC’: A Viral Post Since 2017
With the help of a keyword search on Facebook, we found that the ‘emotional story of Rajesh Tiwari’ has been in circulation since at least November 2017 with the image of Rimon.
We also compared the cut-off marks given in the post with the cut-off marks of Civil Service examinations uploaded on the official site of UPSC between 2014 and 2019. While the cut-off marks for the general category are more than that of SC and SC candidates, none of the figures on the official site match with the figures given in the post in question. Also, the cut-off mark for Civil Service exams 2020 is not yet released.
Speaking to AFWA, Gopalakrishna V, director of Brain Tree, a UPSC training institute based in Hyderabad said, “The cut-off marks for civil service exams are published only after the final selection list is out. While the prelims and mains for Civil Service Examination, 2020 are already over, the interviews are postponed till further orders. Prelims for Civil Service Examination, 2021 is also postponed. So, we don’t know what the cut-off for 2020 and 2021 are.”
Hence, it is clear that the viral post and photo are circulated with the wrong context. The image is of a Bangladeshi social media influencer and not of Rajesh Tiwari who failed UPSC exams because of the reservation system.
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