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| - Fact Check: Year-old Defence Ministry report shared with dynasty spin ahead of UP polls
An image is going viral on social media that shows a newspaper report about the Defence Ministry abolishing 9,300 posts. It also carried an image of Defence Minister Rajnath Singh. India Today's AFWA probes the truth.
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India Today Fact Check
Although Rajnath’s elder son and Noida’s sitting MLA Pankaj Singh has gotten a ticket from the party, his younger son Neeraj Singh hasn’t been offered any. The newspaper report is also more than a year old.
Unemployment is one of the foremost issues in the upcoming Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Manipur, and Goa. Parties contesting for the polls have therefore made jobs-creation an important plank. On social media, however, an image has gone viral that shows a newspaper report about the Defence Ministry abolishing 9,300 posts.
A viral screenshot of the newspaper report also carried an image of Defence Minister Rajnath Singh. The headline of the report in Hindi reads, “9,300 Military Engineer Services posts abolished by the Defence Ministry."
Sharing the cut-out of this report, several Facebook users called Singh out. For example, one user shared this screenshot alongside a caption quoting, “Both his sons got tickets for the 2022 assembly elections. That's why the job ticket for our children has been cancelled.”
Archived versions of similar claims can be seen here and here.
India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) found this claim to be misleading as only one of Rajnath Singh’s sons has been given a ticket for the upcoming polls. At the same time, the news report in the photo is also an old one.
AFWA Probe
With the help of some keywords, we found Rajnath Singh’s family details in a Jagran Josh report. It mentioned that the former Home Minister has two sons and a daughter named Pankaj Singh, Neeraj Singh, and Anamika Singh respectively.
After searching for keywords of Pankaj Singh, it led us to an Economic Times report which noted that he is already the sitting MLA from Noida, and has now been awarded a ticket for the second time from the same constituency by the Bharatiya Janata Party.
But when we searched for the keywords of Neeraj Singh, no such result appeared, which could suggest that he had been given a ticket too. A National Herald report stated that Neeraj has been denied a ticket by the party. It also mentioned that this time, the BJP decided to not give tickets to family members of elected representatives, barring those who are already elected members.
Further, a Fact-Check story by the “Viswas News” made it clear that Rajnath’s younger son Neeraj Singh, hasn’t got a ticket from the party.
While looking closely into the viral newspaper cutting, we noticed that “Jagran Bureau” was written below the headline. After searching for keywords related to this, it took us to a Jagran report published on May 7, 2020. Media outlets like the Hindustan Times and The Indian Express also published similar reports on May 7 and 8, 2020. The abolition of the posts, reportedly, is one of the outcomes of recommendations made by the Lt Gen DB Shekatkar committee report on enhancing the army’s combat potential and trimming its expenditure.
Therefore, we conclude that the claim made in the viral post is misleading as one, this is an old news report, and two, not both of Rajnath Singh’s sons have gotten a ticket for the upcoming polls.
(With inputs from Riddhish Dutta)
READ: Fact Check: Old video from Darjeeling passed off as BJP leader being heckled in UP
ALSO READ: Fact Check: Video of UP election candidate saying he wants to ‘earn money by becoming MLA’ is from 2017
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