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| - Fact Check: This man driving buggy with Kerala CM is NOT Lulu chairman's chauffeur
Social media users claimed that a man driving a buggy with Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan was the Lulu group chairman's chauffeur. However, the man driving the buggy with Pinarayi Vijayan is an UAE minister.
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India Today Fact Check
The man who drove the buggy for Vijayan is UAE’s Minister of State for Foreign Trade Thani bin Ahmed Al-Zeyoudi, not Yusuff Ali’s driver.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath inaugurated the LuLu Mall in Lucknow on July 10. There, Adityanath rode a buggy driven by Yusuff Ali M. A, the Chairman and Managing Director of LuLu Group International.
Following this, two photos — one of Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and the other of Adityanath, both on buggies — have been circulating on social media. Those sharing them claimed that while Adityanath’s buggy was driven by Yusuff Ali himself, it was the UAE-based Indian businessman’s chauffeur who drove Vijayan’s at the inauguration of a LuLu Mall in Kerala.
The archived version of a similar post can be seen here.
AFWA found that the man sitting next to the Kerala CM was the UAE’s Minister of State for Foreign Trade, Thani bin Ahmed Al-Zeyoudi — not Yusuff Ali’s driver.
AFWA Probe
A reverse search of Vijayan’s photo led us to the same image in a report by The Hindu published on December 16, 2021. It said the photo was from the inauguration of the LuLu Mall in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.
According to the caption, the men sitting along with the Kerala CM were the UAE’s Minister of State for Foreign Trade Thani bin Ahmed Al-Zeyoudi, the UAE Ambassador to India Ahmed Abdulrahman AlBanna, and LuLu Group International chairman Yusuff Ali. Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor and political leaders from Kerala, Jose K Mani and Kadakampally Surendran, were seated in the back.
This indicated that the man driving the buggy could be Al-Zeyoudi. We also found two other photos of the same man with Vijayan from the same inauguration ceremony.
On December 16, 2022, the Kerala CM also shared a photo with the same man on his Twitter. This post identified him as Al-Zeyoudi. Tharoor had also tweeted photos with the same man on December 16, 2021.
The UAE has promised to open a state-of-the-art food park in Kerala. @ThaniAlZeyoudi, the UAE Minister of State for Foreign Trade, has said the details would be discussed with the technical team. Thanks to the Govt of UAE for their immense support for Kerala's development. pic.twitter.com/FruzQc1HOI — Pinarayi Vijayan (@pinarayivijayan) December 16, 2021
We further searched for the official Twitter account of the UAE’s Minister of State for Foreign Trade. The photos of the minister on the account confirm he is the same person seen with the Kerala CM. A photograph of Al-Zeyoudi with cabinet minister Piyush Goyal can be seen below.
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Mission accomplished. Today the UAE signed an agreement with India that could lift bilateral non-oil trade to $100 billion in five years. I will work with @PiyushGoyal and our respective business communities to ensure the full potential of the #IndiaUAECEPA is realized pic.twitter.com/QozpGYYaGA — . (@ThaniAlZeyoudi) February 18, 2022
We also found that the photo of Adityanath with Yusuff Ali was from the aforementioned inauguration ceremony.
It is thus clear that the claim is misleading. The man driving the buggy for the Kerala CM is a UAE minister, not a chauffeur.
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