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| - Fact Check: Namaaz, yoga and more! Controversial statement wrongly attributed to Priyanka Gandhi
India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) found that there is no credible report about Priyanka Gandhi making a statement that if namaaz on roads are prohibited, the Congress will disallow yoga in parks.
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India Today Fact Check
So far, there is no credible report about Priyanka making such a statement during her election campaign in UP. Also, the statement has been in circulation since 2018 and was earlier attributed to only “Congress”.
Amid the ongoing row over Muslims offering namaaz in public spaces, a post circulating on social media claims that Priyanka Gandhi Vadra during her election campaign in Uttar Pradesh has warned that if Muslims are forbidden from praying on roads, Congress will disallow yoga in parks too.
One such post in Telugu translates to: “If you forbid praying on roads, we will also forbid yoga in parks,” Priyanka Gandhi Vadra warns during Uttar Pradesh assembly election campaign.
Similar claims are also circulated in Hindi. The archived version can be seen here.
India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found that till the time of filing this story, no such statement has been made by Priyanka Gandhi during her election campaign in UP.
AFWA probe
The Congress formally launched its campaign for the 2022 assembly elections in UP on October 10 with a rally addressed by Priyanka Gandhi in Varanasi. Priyanka, the party’s general secretary and UP in-charge, has been actively campaigning in the state, taking the lead in a number of protests by the Congress on issues such as Lakhimpur Kheri violence.
However, we could not find any credible report on the Congress leader making a statement on the namaaz issue. Had she made such a strong statement, it would have definitely made news.
We reached out to UP Congress spokesperson Surendra Rajput, who said the viral claim is false and Priyanka has not made any such statement during her UP campaign.
Moreover, we found that the same statement attributed to Priyanka has been in circulation for several months now, even before political parties started their campaign in UP.
We then tried to trace the origin of the post and found that the same statement has been viral on Facebook and Twitter since May 2018. It is to note that in these posts, the statement has simply been attributed to the Congress and not Priyanka.
Upon further search, we found multiple media reports from May 2018 about a remark made by Congress leader Ajay Yadav criticising Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar’s statement that namaaz should be read in “mosques or idgahs” or in “private spaces”.
While Khattar later clarified that he will not stop anyone from offering namaaz, Yadav had asked, “Don’t we do yoga in parks, and at times, have jagran on roads?”
The complete statement by Yadav, according to “The Times of India”, is as follows: “Muslims have been offering namaaz in the open for over a decade in Gurugram and everything was smooth until now. With the 2019 polls approaching, they want to divide the society on religious lines. This is purely a political game to get the attention of Hindu voters. Instead of making such statements, the CM should allot places large enough for offering namaaz. They (Muslims) congregate on the streets because they do not have a place big enough. And why blame them alone? Don’t we do yoga in parks, and at times, have jagran on roads?”
In our investigation, we found that the statement that is now being attributed to Priyanka Gandhi started circulating on social media after this statement by Yadav in 2018.
According to a report by “India Today”, in December 2018, after Noida authorities issued prohibitory orders on offering namaaz at public places, UP Congress had written to the state police chief demanding that such orders should be issued for every community, including RSS shakhas, and no religious or political events should be allowed in any public place without permission from the district administration concerned.
It is, however, clear that during her UP campaign so far, Priyanka Gandhi has not made any such statement on public namaaz as is being claimed in the viral post.
(With inputs from Satyam Mishra in Lucknow)
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