A press release purportedly from the All-India Congress Committee has gone viral on social media. The press release claimed that the AICC is contesting Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi from Amethi and Raebareli Parliament Constituencies respectively.
A social media user shared the image with a caption, “Honorable Priyanka Gandhi ji from Raebareli and Rahul Gandhi ji announced from Amethi. (translated from Hindi)”
A similar image can be seen here.
SouthCheck found the claim to be false. We found that Congress has made no such announcements regarding Rahul and Priyanka.
We first compared the viral press release with the one shared from the official X handle for the announcements by the Indian National Congress. We observed that the font of the date marking the date of publishing is larger than the font of the date in the original press release.
Moreover, we also found that the font used in the alleged Congress press release is different from the official release. The one in the viral press copy is sans serif and the official Congress press note used a serif font. This gave the viral press release an informal look, with no paragraphs giving more information about the announcement.
Even in the other viral image, we can see the difference from the original press releases from the Congress that announced the list of candidates for the Lok Sabha elections 2024. We found that the paragraph used in the viral press release is different from the original press releases announcing the list of candidates.
In the original press release, the Congress note reads, “The candidates selected by the Central Election Committee of the party for the ensuing general elections to the Lok Sabha and the Legislative Assembly of Odisha.”
However, the statement of the viral press release reads, “The following two candidates have been selected by the Central Election Committee for the ensuing elections to the Lok Sabha from Uttar Pradesh.”
Moreover, we also checked and found no such information was uploaded by the X handle of Congress. We also contacted Bilah Ahmed from the social media team of Congress who said that the viral post is fake and no candidature has been announced for these two seats yet.
