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‘Factchecker’ gets it wrong: Fact-checks PM Modi based on misreporting of passport rules

OpIndia Staff
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‘Factchecker’ gets it wrong: Fact-checks PM Modi based on misreporting of passport rules

Yesterday, PTI reported that PM Modi had made an announcement regarding the passport rules:


On the face of it, this is a welcome move cutting read tape. But many on social media were unimpressed. Reactions of users suggested that such a provision in the passport rules had existed for a long time.

Factchechecker.in, a website that claims to check claims made by all and sundry (although it has been debunked on OpIndia.com earlier), latched onto this and ran a report:

A cursory glance would suggest that Factchecker.in had caught PM Modi on the wrong foot. In the same article though, was this paragraph:

The Prime Minister also said that “women don’t have to submit marriage/divorce certificate for passport”.

It appears that PM Modi is referring to the changes in the passport rules notified by the external affairs ministry in December 2016.

So, it appears that PM Modi made 2 statements, one of which was wrong, and the second referred to a recent change in the rule. But if we look at the video (from approximately 19.45 minutes) of this speech, something different emerges. A verbatim transcript:

An important change has been made to the Passport rules too. Now a woman, need not furnish a copy of her marriage or divorce certificate. It will be her discretion as to use her father’s name or mother’s name in the passport.

These are the only lines related to the passport rules in the entire video. Now compare this quote, with the quote mentioned by PTI in the NDTV tweet, and also with the ANI tweet. There is a small but subtle difference: contrary to what PTI reported, PM Modi never said “women need not change their names in passport after marriage anymore”. Instead he specified only that certain documentation rules have been relaxed.

So to summarize: PTI wrongly quoted the Prime Minister. NDTV tweeted the same. Factchecker, instead of checking the facts, trusted the NDTV tweet of the PTI quote as gospel truth, and on that basis ran a story whose title said that Modi had got something wrong. But the fact is, Modi had never said it!

And further down in the same article, Factchecker mentioned that the ANI quote (which it claimed was a quote in addition to the PTI quote), was correct and was related to a change made in the passport rules a few months ago. Thus, Factchecker themselves have certified that the PM got this part right, and as we can see now, this was the ONLY thing he said relating to passports!

Factchecker.in should start taking its name a bit more seriously.

‘Bunch of Fools’ want you to share ideas on how to keep India clean

OpIndia Staff
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‘Bunch of Fools’ want you to share ideas on how to keep India clean

On 23 November 2015, few groups from different parts of India came together to do Shramdaan, which involved coordinated efforts by different voluntary groups towards improving cleanliness and sanitation situation in their respective cities.

All of them used a WhatsApp group to pool in ideas, share their work and appreciate whatever good was being done. As this furthers the objective of Swachh Bharat campaign that was launched by the Prime Minister, even the PM had appreciated their efforts:



The concept of Shramdaan was furthered by Prime Minister Narendra Modi who appealed to the citizens of India, through his radio address Mann Ki Baat in September last year, to devote a few hours for Swachh Bharat by participating in various cleanliness activities.

He also urged citizens to share pictures and videos of their ‘#Shramdaan’ and further strengthen this mass movement across the country, and many citizens and groups are doing exactly the same. Thanks to the determination and perseverance of these individuals and groups, a certain stability and continuity has been achieved. Now they are ready to scale up Shramdaan to new heights.

To take a step towards the same, a Shramdaan Conclave is being organized by the Raipur District Administration (Chhattisgarh) and a volunteer group named “Bunch of Fools” on 15-16 April 2017.

Papers and presentations from different groups have been invited. The conference seeks to define and draft a clear course and model of public participation in Cleanliness & Sanitation. The aim is also to deliberate upon channelizing the energy of masses towards #SwachhBharat.

Here are the names of a few of the groups who will be attending the conclave at Raipur, bringing with them their experience and innovative ideas. Their contribution to Swachh Bharat is remarkable and they have managed to change perceptions in a big way from wherever they hail from:

1. Samarpit Sewa Samiti, Vidisha, Madhya Pradesh
2. Lalitpur Jagrukta Abhiyaan, Lalitpur, Uttar Pradesh
3. Swacch Jarora, Jarora, Himachal Pradesh
4. NDYS (Swacch Narmda), Shegaon, Madhya Pradesh
5. Helping Hand Alwar, Alwar Rajasthan
6. MAD Foundation, Mumbai, Rajasthan
7. Navyakriti Foundation, Delhi
8. Mission Parijat, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh
9. Shashi Foundation, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh
10. Digital Jhansi, Jhansi, Uttar Pradesh
11. Team Shramdaan, Ghazipur, Uttar Pradesh
12. Green Warriors, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh
13. Nagpur I-clean, Nagpur, Maharashtra
14. Bhopal I-clean, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh
15. Swarnrekha Samiti, Ranchi, Jharkhand
16. Green Minds, Bhandara, Maharashtra
17. Mission Shramdaan, Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh
18. Dev Excel Foundation, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh
19. Change India Foundation, Jamshedpur, Jharkhand
20. Helping Hands Palwal, Palwal, Haryana
21. Swachh Bharat Mission, Delhi
22. Paryavaran Dost, Ranchi, Jahrkhand
23. Paryavarn Sena, Pratapgarh, Uttar Pradesh
24. Young India Raipur, Chhattisgarh
25. Green Police, Nagaon, Assam
26. Shuddhi NGO, Delhi
27. Kshiteshwar Nath Sewa Samiti, Balia, Uttar Pradesh

For more information or for participating, please write to [email protected]

Trolls attack Gautam Gambhir for supporting armed forces in Kashmir

OpIndia Staff
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Trolls attack Gautam Gambhir for supporting armed forces in Kashmir

The whole nation was shocked and incensed after viewing the video of Kashmiri youths assaulting CRPF Jawans that went viral recently. In the video, unidentified Kashmiri youths were seen targeting the Jawans who displayed extreme restraint and didn’t even once react to the constant abuse by the locals:


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Among the people who were outraged by the incident was cricketer Gautam Gambhir who took to Twitter to let his feelings known:


In the 1st tweet Gambhir expressed his anger against the Jihadi and Aazadi brigade and in the 2nd put out his own symbolic interpretation of our national flag based on his fury against Jihadist and Terrorist elements working against India.

While most welcomed Gambhir’s passion when it came to his support for the army and the paramilitary forces, there were some trolls who decided to attack and mock him for his views and called him names. He was called a Modi supporter (as if people who don’t support Narendra Modi shouldn’t support the army) while some inane ones like Sagarika Ghose even asked Gambhir to be arrested for sedition:


One troll virtually called Gambhir a terrorist:


As seen above, many trolls were using the pretext of his interpretation of the Indian flag in the the current context to attack him while failing to react or respond about the real issue of the plight of paramilitary forces or terrorism which he had raised.

On a related note, even though all these trolls decided to attack him today, the same lot was supporting him when he stood up for freedom of expression of Gurmehar Kaur in the not so recent past. What about Gambhir’s freedom of expression?

Commodity guru Jim Rogers changes his mind about India, will these people too?

Hemant Bijapurkar
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Commodity guru Jim Rogers changes his mind about India, will these people too?

Jim Rogers the Commodity Guru and Hedge fund manager in September 2015 had come out to state that he had sold all his shares in India as one couldn’t just invest based on hope. He had also claimed that the NDA had failed to live up to investor expectations.

But now less than two years later he appears to have changed his mind and now states that he was hasty to exit India. “Unfortunately, I sold too soon” said Rogers, as he stated that he was surprised that the Government managed to pass the GST bill. Regarding his decision to sell two years ago he reasoned that he sold because he was disappointed with the pace of reforms but won’t enter the Indian market yet with it being on a high. In 2017 the Indian stock market has been the best performer among the world’s 10 largest stock markets.

Perhaps, this prompted Rogers to admit that he completely misread the India situation and that the India story is now a moving a train:

I don’t want to jump on to a moving train. When you jump on to a moving train, you’ll get hurt

Rogers is most well known for his famed partnership with George Soros in creating the Quantum Fund which in the 1970s gave a return of about 4200%. So in 2015 when Roger made is bearish call about the Indian market, many used it as a opportunity to attack the Modi Government just by piggybacking on Roger’s decision.

Here are a few reactions from the days when Rogers had sounded his dooms-day alarms, prematurely:


Some even seemed to enjoy it:


Alleged trolls too expressed their unhappiness:


Even political parties and their minions used it as an opportunity to take potshots:


Funnily even Subramanian Swamy had shared the particular news story but it wasn’t clear if he was endorsing it:


While this ‘U-Turn’  by Rogers might amuse a lot of people, Rogers might have had perfectly good reasons based on his investment philosophy to make his call back then. Now that he has been courageous and has owned up to his mistake it remains to be seen whether the people mentioned above too do the same.

Also as a footnote, Rogers in the past has held odd views about India and has claimed that India as we know it won’t survive in the next 30-40 years.

Inside Bhadrak: Why a sleepy town in Odisha burnt in communal fire

Sambit Nayak
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Inside Bhadrak: Why a sleepy town in Odisha burnt in communal fire

Bhadrak town, located in the northern part of Odisha, has witnessed communal violence recently. The area has been under curfew since Friday (7th April). While Odisha police has been able to contain much of violence by now, curfew is still enforced in the town for the major part of the day (and night) while adjoining areas are still under prohibitory orders under section IPC 144.

No loss of life has been reported but properties worth lakhs have been gutted and normal life is thrown out of gear.

It all began with a derogatory Facebook post where abusive language was used for Hindus and Hindu gods Rama and Sita. This happened on the eve of Ram Navami (5th April) when three Muslim youths left these abusive messages on the profile page of Bajrang Dal activist Ajit Padhiari.

An outfit named Bhagat Sena Ram Navmi Samiti lodged a complaint with police in this regard with a demand of arresting the youths whose names were identified as Asif Khan, Asif Ali and Mohammed Rehan.

With tensions soaring, a peace committee meeting was convened on Friday evening with local MLA and IG police. However, situation turned worse as a group of youths riding nearly hundred bikes rallied in Puruna Bazaaar area shouting “Pakistan Zindabaad” and other anti national slogans even while the peace meeting was on.


This group is reported to have targeted shops owned by Hindu traders in Chandan Bazaar area. In retaliation, shops were also burnt in Muslim dominated areas.

While police and administration are being accused of not acting promptly to curb the violence, they were prompt in the clampdown on social media websites, which were banned for at least two days to curb spreading of rumours. On 9th April, Police was able to arrest the main culprit who made these derogatory comments. Other two are still not traceable.

The main culprit, Asif Ali Khan, happens to be the son of a local BJD leader Asghar Ali Khan. Asif, who is pursuing an engineering degree, has admitted to the crime according to the Police. Along with Asif, 80 other arrests have been made so far in cases of violence and arson in the area.

Bhadrak had witnessed similar riots in 1991, again during Ram Navami, which unfortunately had claimed 17 lives then. Biju Patnaik was the Chief Minister then, who happens to be the father of current Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik.

So far the state administration has been largely able to contain the riot without any loss of lives. Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik visited Bhadrak on Wednesday and appealed for peace to all sections of the society. A new SP has been appointed and ADM has also been transferred.

With nearly 40% Muslim population, Bhadrak has always been a communally sensitive town. Bordering town Soro too had witnessed such incidents during Ganesh idol immersion last year. In fact, small communal skirmishes have been reported during Ganesh Puja from various part of the state in 2016. Similar scenes were witnessed during Lord Jagannath’s Bahuda Jatra (Rath Yatra) in Rourkela last year.

People are now beginning to question as to why such incidents happen only during the Hindu festivals. If Muslim festivals like the Birthday of Prophet Mohammad, which was celebrated early this year, can pass off peacefully, why Hindu festivals have to witness violent incidents? While it is easy to blame fringe Hindu groups, one also needs to question the radicalisation among Muslim youths. Last year, four SIMI suspects were arrested from Rourkela, who were staying in Bhadrak for at least six months as carpenters.

Sehwag slams Indian Express for misleading post about his stance on Paramilitary forces

Hemant Bijapurkar
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Sehwag slams Indian Express for misleading post about his stance on Paramilitary forces

The Sports Bureau of the Indian Express today incurred the wrath of former Indian cricketer Virender Sehwag after their tweet mischievously tried to mislead people into believing that Sehwag had criticized the Indian Paramilitary forces.

The Express Sports (sports section of Indian Express) put out this tweet:

The accompanying text which even tagged Sehwag claimed that he had for some reason slammed the Paramilitary forces but the link clearly specified that the article was about his tweet condemning the assault on the CRPF Jawan in Kashmir.

This was the tweet on which the Indian Express’s article was based. Here one can clearly see that Sehwag was slamming those who had assaulted the Jawan and was not criticizing the Paramilitary forces:


But the completely erroneous tweet by the Indian Express irked Sehwag who responded:


After he did so, they promptly deleted the tweet. Thankfully Sehwag had taken a screenshot which he put up soon:


After the outrage, Express Sports put out a fresh tweet with the correct information:


This either might have been a mistake by those handling the Indian Express Sport’s twitter account or as claimed by Sehwag it could have been an unethical attempt to generate clicks for the article.
Doing what is rarely seen in the Indian Media, Express Sports apologized to Sehwag for its error:


Well, you don’t mess with Viru paji!

Why AAP lost the Rajouri Garden by-poll

Ankit Jain
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Why AAP lost the Rajouri Garden by-poll

There is a quote in Hindi that appears very apt for today, it goes:

“Kaath ki haandi baar baar nahi chadhti”

It roughly means that a person can be fooled once but not always.

In the 2015 Assembly Elections for Delhi, AAP was given an overwhelming majority based on their many promises, some being: free WiFi, enhanced security (special teams) for women, free water, installing 15 lakh CCTV cameras, 8 lakh new jobs, and cheaper electricity bills. There were many hopes and expectations from the party which had been selling ”Alternative Politics” to the Indian voter.

While there is no doubt that AAP has managed to provide free water (under a certain threshold) and has continued its electricity subsidy, all other promises have fallen flat. Another possibly emotional promise that AAP had made was about Kejriwal not leaving Delhi like he did last time to go on to fight the Lok Sabha elections from Varanasi. That too was not honored by the party as the Delhiites saw Kejriwal hopping from one state to another to campaign for various state elections, while leaving governance in the hands of a less popular Manish Sisodia.

Rajouri Garden seat is a blend of both upscale posh localities and slums. The vote share roughly splits like, Punjabis and Sikhs comprise 50% of the voters and more than 15% belong to the Gujjar community. They by-polls were required after the sitting AAP MLA Jarnail Singh resigned to fight assembly elections in Punjab (which he eventually lost).

While the BJP-SAD combine fielded a Sikh candidate and a popular face in Majinder Singh Sirsa, Congress fielded a Gujjar Candidate named Meenakshi Chandela. AAP too decided to field a Sikh candidate in Harjeet Singh. The seat went to polls on 9th April with a 46.48% voter turnout and votes were counted today.

So considering all the above factors, what conclusions we can draw from the results?

BJP won the seat comfortably by polling 40,602 votes and bagged 52% vote share. The Congress came 2nd with 25,950 votes and 33.2% vote share. Unlike 2015, Congress gave a good fight, maybe thanks to its Gujjar candidate, and maybe due to absence of any tactical voting to AAP by its supporters that is supposed to have happened in last elections. AAP, which in 2015 had won the seat with 54,916 votes came a disappointing 3rd.

This time, AAP just bagged 10,243 votes or just 13.1% vote share. What makes it worse for AAP is the fact that going by the Election Commission’s rules it has lost its deposit in the seat as it failed to poll more than 1/6th of the total votes polled.

The Rajouri Garden by-poll reaffirms the perception that BJP is retaining its vote share in Delhi, Congress has regained its lost ground, while the Aam Aadmi party has lost the popular support it enjoyed in 2015.

Also there might not be a lot of scope for Kejriwal to cry EVM fraud as in this election the EVMs contained the additional facility of the VVPAT, which would have helped voters in verifying if votes were indeed getting registered correctly. No complaint of wrong vote being registered was lodged during the polling.

This election held so close to the upcoming MCD elections might signal the times to come in Delhi politics. For a party that had polled about 47% of the votes in 2015, getting reduced to 13% doesn’t show a shining future. This might prompt the AAP to increase its campaign efforts and maybe also prompt it to make further desperate promises like their property tax waiver one. Though for the Congress and the BJP (who now have 4 MLAs in the assembly), the results might be a huge shot in the arm.

The MCD results will be declared on 26th April exactly 13 days later. And going by today’s result this number 13 might really prove to be a bad omen for the Aam Aadmi Party.

Election Commission and Congress leader trash Aaj Tak report on EVMs registering wrong votes

OpIndia Staff
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Election Commission and Congress leader trash Aaj Tak report on EVMs registering wrong votes

Assembly Constituency of Dholpur in Rajasthan went for by-polls on Sunday and according to some reports, the polling there wasn’t without its share of controversy. Aaj Tak put out a sensational report titled:

धौलपुर में कांग्रेस का हंगामा, बटन दबाया ‘हाथ’ का खिल रहा है ‘कमल’

Translation: Congress spreads pandemonium in Dholpur as even though button corresponding to ”hand” was pressed it was ”lotus” that was blooming

The report claimed that during polling many voters had complained that even though they had voted for one party, the slip from the VVPAT machine was showing that the vote was registered in the name of another party. VVPAT or voter verified paper audit trail is a system where the machine prints a paper slip with the symbol of the party he voted for after the voter presses the button on EVM.

The report claimed that after investigation, 18 such defective machines were found which were then replaced. The report quoted a certain Rakesh Jain, who alleged that even though he had voted for the Congress the resultant slip was showing BJP. The report also quoted the returning officer as acknowledging Rakesh’s version and also stated that as a result polls were stopped for 2 hrs.

The report also claimed that Congress leader named Banwari Lal Sharma who was contesting the elections claimed that he was informed by party workers that many EVM machines could not be started during the polls and also claimed that there was a malfunction in some EVMs about wrong candidates getting votes.

Later, repolling was ordered at a polling booth numbered 163 of the Dholpur constituency.

The allegation in the Aaj Tak report was very similar to the one Kejriwal had made about EVM’s in Bhind Madhya Pradesh favoring BJP regardless of the button pressed. That lie, created by one media organisation and spread by politicians, was debunked by us and the same was confirmed by the Election Commission later.

The same cycle was repeated after the Aaj Tak reported about the supposedly faulty EVMs in Dholpur. Arvind Kejriwal immediately seized the opportunity and started leveling allegations:


But unfortunately for Kejriwal and his supporters, this report by Aaj Tak too seems to have been debunked. According to this Indian Express report, the Aaj Tak report was erroneous.

The Indian Express quoted Rajasthan’s Chief Electoral Officer who claimed that the Collector of Dholpur had probed the allegations and found the media reports which had made such claims to be false. He also claimed that the voter and the Congress candidate who were quoted by Aaj Tak have given in writing that they had made no such complaints.

To get Aaj Tak’s version, Indian Express sent a mail to the Hindi news channel, but they couldn’t get any response.

Some people in Aaj Tak asked the Indian Express ‘off the record’ as to why a repolling was ordered if everything was fine. The Chief Electoral Officer addressed that question and clarified that repolling was ordered because mock voting data wasn’t erased from the EVM’s after their trial on Saturday.

So it appears another case of erroneous (on purpose?) reporting about EVMs that was used by Arvind Kejriwal and his supporters to push a propaganda.

NDTV and Nidhi Razdan conduct an entire debate based on fake news

OpIndia Staff
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NDTV and Nidhi Razdan conduct an entire debate based on fake news

The poor man’s Barkha Dutt strikes again. Just yesterday we had discussed how a highly misleading story in the Hindustan Times had led to widespread misplaced outrage. Hindustan Times ran a story titled “Eat what you order: Modi government to fix portions of food served in hotels”,  which was curated by many in the media.

But the truth emerged later, when a video of the Union Food Minister Ram Vilas Paswan came out, where he categorically said that he had no plans of “fixing portion” size. Rather he was more interested in getting restaurants to specify the quantity being served. Below is the relevant portion of the transcript (full video and transcript here):

We don’t want to control anything. We are doing this in the interest of consumers. Where are we saying that you should keep only so much quantity in one portion, we are only saying you should mention the quantity being served in each portion.

Subsequent to this video coming out, many media reports came out with a different headline altogether,  and the “fix portion” hysteria was replaced by the more factual “specify portion” version, which tallies with what the Food minister had said. One may find both ideas moronic, but there is a huge difference between “fixing” portion size and asking someone to “specify” the portion size.

However, NDTV and Nidhi Razdan had other ideas. NDTV and Nidhi had framed a narrative: Is India becoming a Nanny State,  and a debate was decided to be held on this issue. One of the sub-topics which “proved” this narrative, and which was eventually debated was the “portion” size issue. But NDTV and Nidhi kept on repeating the lie of “fixing portions” and based on this straw-man conducted a debate on prime time television:

Worse, this clarification was given by Paswan to NDTV itself. NDTV’s Sunetra Choudhury had taken the byte from Paswan where he clarified that the intent was to ask restaurants to specify portion size and not fixing of the same. This is very similar to the incident where Nidhi, in association with an abusive lying troll, repeated a lie, when the same lied had been clarified by Barkha Dutt on her show a few months ago!

Coming to the debate, it was entirely focused on the “fixing portions” angle which was obviously fake, and the arguments were various ranges of whataboutery, given by the panelists as well as Nidhi herself: “What about food grains rotting, what about the wastage of security forces by giving security to MPs”!!!

As for the BJP spokesperson GVL Narsimharao, he ensured that he made a laughing-stock of himself. He never once mentioned that the minister had clarified his position and that NDTV had gotten the topic itself wrong. Instead he compounded his problems by first branding all Indians as irresponsible and insensitive when it comes to food habits and then proceeding to make largely irrelevant arguments.

While this was one debate on Nidhi’s show, the topic of the second debate lent a bit of irony to all the proceedings:

Sushma Swaraj terms India Today report “false and mischievous”

OpIndia Staff
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Sushma Swaraj terms India Today report “false and mischievous”

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Wednesday trashed an India Today report that had alleged that she had requested Congress MP Shashi Tharoor’s help in drafting a resolution condemning Kulbhushan Jadhav’s death sentence. The resolution is supposed to be taken up in both the Houses of the Parliament.

Swaraj called the story a “mischievously planted” one. She tweeted:


On 11 April (Yesterday) India Today website had reported the story with the headline:

‘At Sushma Swaraj’s request, Shashi Tharoor to help Modi government draft statement on Kulbhushan Jadhav’

After Swaraj pointed out, the website quickly changed the headline to:

‘Shashi Tharoor likely to help Modi government draft statement on Kulbhushan Jadhav’.

Stating that there is no dearth of talent in MEA, Swaraj had earlier tweeted:


The Parliament, had earlier unanimously condemned the death sentence handed down to Kulbhushan Jadhav by a Pakistani military court. Jadhav, 46, a former Indian Navy officer, has been sentenced to death by a military court in Pakistan on the charges of “espionage and sabotage”.

Amid the growing anger over the Pakistani court’s order, Swaraj told the Rajya Sabha in a powerful speech:

“Kulbhushan Jadhav is not just the son of his parents, he is the son of entire India. We will try to save him in whatever way possible.”

Meanwhile, Shashi Tharoor too has come up with a response on Twitter:

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