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Fact Check
The Central government has announced free travel for senior citizens across trains, buses, metro services, and even domestic flights.
The viral news is false. The websites that published the claim were found to be dodgy and unreliable. The text on the websites were found to be AI generated.
Fueling public interest and anticipation, several purported news outlets and social media accounts have recently been sharing an alleged news item, claiming that the central government has announced free travel for senior citizens across trains, buses, metro services, and even domestic flights.
As per the news, senior citizens will be able to avail of the travel benefits using government-issued identity cards, such as Aadhaar or Voter ID. This initiative aims to encourage travel among the elderly population and promote domestic tourism across the country, the purported report claimed, adding that in addition to centrally-operated railway services, the free travel facility will also be extended to state-run bus services across the country and, in the first phase, to Air India flights.
Many such reports can be seen here, here and here.
A Google search using keywords such as “senior citizens,” “free travel,” and “central government announcement” did not yield us any relevant reports from credible news outlets.
On a close analysis of the website, we noticed several inconsistencies.
There was no ‘about us’ section, nor a ‘contact us page’ on the site. The url does not end with gov.in as is typical for government websites.
The home page of the website postures itself as the official website of “Municipal Corporation Faridabad,” detailing all information on the municipal commission of Faridabad in a single page.
The website also carried other articles, pitched as news reports, on various subjects, as can be seen here, and here.
We also noticed that all articles were published in the name of one Catherine Johnson, and carried the image of a woman, supposedly Johnson. However, a reverse image search on Google revealed that the image was actually of Florence Colgate, a British student from Kent.
According to the reports published by Dailymail and Time.com, in 2012, then eighteen-year-old Florence Colgate, a student from Kent, England, was described as having the “perfect face,” with her features reportedly aligning closely with an international blueprint for ideal facial proportions—measuring optimal ratios between the eyes, mouth, forehead, and chin.
We then submitted a sample of the writeup to an AI detection tool by Grammarly, which revealed that the text on the alleged report was 100% AI generated.
Following this, Newschecker submitted the link of the website on Scam Detector, a prominent online fraud prevention tool, which rated the website as “Questionable” and “Controversial” with a score of 36.7 out of 100.
“The Scam Detector website Validator gives mcfaridabad.com a low trust score on the platform: 36.7. It signals that the business could be defined by the following tags: Questionable. Controversial. Flagged.. We are confident about our score as we also partner with other high-tech, fraud-prevention companies that found the same issues. So, why this low score? We came up with the 36.7 score based on 53 aggregated factors relevant to mcfaridabad.com’s industry. The algorithm detected possible high-risk activity related to phishing, spamming, and other factors noted in the Questionable. Controversial. Flagged. Tags above. Long story short, we caution you about using this website. But let’s explain in more detail,” the review of the website on Scam Detector read.
To verify the claim further, we reached out to Diptimoy Dutta, Chief Public Relations Officer of Eastern Railway, to inquire whether the central government has made any official announcement regarding free travel for senior citizens across all government-run transport services, including railways. He confirmed the report as fake.
The transport Minister of West Bengal, Snehasis Chakraborty also dismissed the report and said, “Nothing like that is happening.”
The report also mentions Air India by name. We have reached out to Air India authorities for clarification and their response, if received, will be included as an update to this report.
The fake report was also featured by a number of similar websites posing to be credible government platforms or news outlets, and matched word-to-word with the write-up on mcfaridabad.com, indicating a concerted push to spread fake information.
There have been recurring instances of similar claims, stating that Indian Railways has introduced a new policy offering a 50% concession on train tickets for senior citizens. The Indian Railways discontinued senior citizen concessions in March 2020 as part of its COVID-19 safety and cost-control measures. The government has repeatedly clarified since, that due to financial constraints, there are currently no plans to reinstate these concessions. Furthermore, the IRCTC booking portal reflects this policy, as senior citizens are charged the same fare as general passengers. Notably, there was also no mention of restoring these concessions in the Union Budget for 2025–26.
Newschecker has, in the past, fact checked similar attempts at misinformation, where fake websites of government entities or educational institutions are set up to spread false information regarding government schemes and projects, causing confusion among readers. One such instance can be seen here, where a webpage posing to be that of an educational institution, falsely claimed that the government was planning to introduce an ‘occupancy tax’ for tenants. Another report by the same website claimed that UPI transactions would soon be taxed with GST, while another claimed that a new 4-day workweek was being considered.
These fake websites primarily intend to earn revenue from advertisement, says Karan Saini, a cybersecurity researcher. “The site is using AdSense from the looks of it. Generally, Google AdSense has rules for what sites get accepted into their program, where sites with low quality or inaccurate content aren’t accepted. This has been turned upside down with LLM’s being able to write text that appears high quality.”
Furthermore, he asks the public, especially senior citizern to exercise caution while receiving any news on any government schemes. “If you come across any suspicious or misleading news, always verify it through official government websites or trusted sources before accepting it as true. As a general practice, it is better to consume content from sources you already know are trustworthy.” he added.
The news that the central government has announced free travel for senior citizens across trains, buses, metro services, and even domestic flights was found to be false and baseless.
Also Read: Fake AI-Generated Reports On 4-Day Workweek, New Labour Code Shared As Real News
Sources
Report by Dailymail
Report by Time.com
Review by Scam Detector
Conformation from Diptimoy Dutta, Chief Public Relations Officer of Eastern Railway
Conformation from Snehasis Chakraborty, The transport Minister of West Bengal
With Inputs: Kushel Madhusoodan, Newschecker.com
False
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