Authors
Vaibhav is a part of Newschecker’s English team, where he spots and debunks all kinds of misinformation, making the rounds on the internet. A Journalism graduate from St. Xavier's College, Mumbai, he holds an M.A degree in Philosophy and an M.Phil from Delhi University.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s educational qualifications has been under constant scrutiny since he took office in 2014. The affidavit submitted by Prime Minister Modi to contest the 2019 Lok Sabha elections states that he graduated with a Master of Arts (MA) degree in 1983 from Gujarat University, Ahmedabad. However, many opposition leaders continue to raise questions about his educational qualifications. In light of this narrative, a video claiming that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is pretending to write in a visitor’s book has gone viral on social media.
The video has been shared by Twitter user @SurrbhiM who has around 12,200 followers on the platform. The video has garnered around 5,27,500 views and has received 553 likes and 257 retweets with the caption ‘Modi does the acting of writing , Hey bhagwa’n.
Newscheker found similar claims with different captions.
In the video, Prime Minister Narendra Modi seems to be writing a little above the page, in a visitors book.
Fact Check/Verification
To verify the authenticity of the video, Newschecker conducted a reverse image search of the key-frames of the video on Google and found that this video was from his recent visit to the Sant Ravidas Temple in Delhi’s Karol Bagh. For more information about the video, we did a Google search using the keywords ‘PM Modi visits saint Ravidas temple’ and found media reports about the event that Prime Minister Narendra Modi attended.
According to an article published by the Indian Express, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who attended the Shabda Kirtan function at the temple, had written a paragraph related to Sant Ravidas in the visitor’s book.
According to another article which was published by India Today, Prime Minister Modi wrote in the visitor’s book at the Sant Ravidas Temple.
Upon further investigation, Newschecker found a video on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s official Youtube channel uploaded on February 16, 2022 which contained similar images as seen in the viral video.
In the video, around the 7 minute mark, we can see Prime Minister Modi signing after carefully running through the message, which seems to have already been written in the visitor’s book.
But the habit of signing a pre-written message is not out of the ordinary. On researching, we found several videos where the Prime Minister writes messages on the visitors book, while in several others, we can see the Prime Minister signing already written messages in the visitors book.
Videos of Prime Minister Modi writing in visitor’s books
Videos of Prime Minister Modi signing a pre-written message in a visitor’s book
Conclusion
According to the investigation conducted by the Newschecker team, the claim that “Prime Minister Narendra Modi was pretending to write in a visitor’s book” is misleading. In fact, the video shows Prime Minister Modi reading the message and then signing it.
Our Sources
Video published by PM Narendra Modi’s YouTube channel
Article published by The Indian Express
Article published by India Today
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Authors
Vaibhav is a part of Newschecker’s English team, where he spots and debunks all kinds of misinformation, making the rounds on the internet. A Journalism graduate from St. Xavier's College, Mumbai, he holds an M.A degree in Philosophy and an M.Phil from Delhi University.
