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| - Fact Check: No, Puducherry Congress MLAs were not attacked for joining the BJP
A viral image claims to shows Congress workers in Puducherry thrashing a Congress MLA who recently joined the BJP. India Today's AFWA probes the truth.
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India Today Fact Check
BJP Puducherry unit confirmed that none of the MLAs who shifted to BJP was attacked. Also, the image is from 2018 from a clash that broke out during a public hearing for the expansion of a pharma unit in Puducherry.
The Congress party recently suffered a setback in Puducherry after five of its MLAs shifted to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). One MLA from the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) also joined the BJP.
In this context, an image of a clash between the police and the public is being circulated with the claim that a Congress MLA from Puducherry who joined BJP was attacked by Congress workers.
The caption to one such image posted on Twitter reads, “Puducherry Congress MLA who joined BJP manhandled by Congress workers. Sad.” The text in the Malayalam language along with the image also translates to the same.
India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found that the claim along with the image is misleading. The Puducherry BJP unit confirmed to us that none of the Congress MLAs who recently shifted to BJP was attacked by other Congress workers. Also, the image shared along with the claim is from a 2018 protest that broke out during a public hearing for the expansion of Strides Shasun Limited, a pharmaceutical unit in Puducherry.
The archived versions of similar posts can be seen here, here, and here.
AFWA probe
Though Puducherry Congress MLAs joining BJP made national headlines in the last two months, we couldn’t find any credible news reports about these MLAs being attacked by other Congress workers.
We then contacted A Namassivayam, former PWD Minister of Puducherry and the first MLA to quit the Congress and join the BJP in January 2021.
Rubbishing the viral claim Namassivayam said, “I joined BJP after resigning from my MLA post. Neither I nor other legislators from Congress who joined BJP were attacked by anyone as claimed in these social media posts. No incident of this sort has come to our notice.”
AFWA also reached out to Pratiksha Godara, Senior Superintendent of Police (Law and Order), Puducherry, who confirmed that the viral claim is false, and no such complaint has been registered in Puducherry.
“No such political clash was reported in Puducherry recently. We have also not received any complaint from any of the political parties in this regard,” Godara clarified.
India Today’s Puducherry bureau also confirmed to AFWA that there was no attack on the Congress legislators who joined the BJP.
Image along with the claim dates back to 2018
We also did a reverse image search of the photograph circulating along with the viral claim and found an uncropped version of the same image published in a 2018 Tamil news report.
According to this news piece, the image is from a protest that broke out in Kalapet, Puducherry in 2018 during a public hearing for the expansion of Strides Shasun Limited, a pharmaceutical unit in Puducherry. The meeting, which was organised by the pollution committee under the district collector's chairmanship, had locals opposing the idea of an expansion citing environmental concerns. However, there was another group that insisted on the expansion stating it would provide employment opportunities.
Multiple news organisations had reported this incident in 2018.
A video story by India Today on the Kalapet clash can be seen here.
Hence, the viral claim that a Puducherry Congress MLA who joined BJP was manhandled by other Congress workers is false. The image along with the claim is from a 2018 clash that broke out during a public hearing for the expansion of a pharmaceutical unit in Puducherry.
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