Nirmala Sitharaman calls out fake tweet by TV channel’s parody Twitter handle

Team Suno Neta Tuesday 11th of September 2018 10:07 AM

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Nirmala Sitharaman.

Defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman, on Sunday night, had to tweet calling out a fake quote attributed to her by a parody handle of Republic TV.

On Saturday, the parody handle, @RepubliicTV, had tweeted: “Is Rahul Gandhi really on Mansarovar Yatra Why is he sharing Edited pics, even the shadow of stick was not there in one of the Pic he shared::Defence Minister in BJP Headquarter, File Pic [Sic].”

According to Boom, a fact-checking website, the parody account was created in April this year and had around 120 followers. Although handle clearly mentioned that it was a parody account, the tweet had been retweeted over 600 times.

The handle, which had an extra ‘I’ in its handle, which spelled as “@RepubliicTV”, has now been deleted. The archived tweet can be found here.

Falling for the fake tweet, Manickam Tagore, former member of Parliament and secretary of All India Congress Committee, on September 9 ridiculed Sitharaman in a tweet.

He tweeted: “Hahaha! How @nsitharaman is unfit to be the Defence minister of India is proved again! She needs to have check up first! #RahulGandhi [Sic.]”

Tagore later deleted his tweet.

Already, there had had been a lot of controversy had been created around fake news on Rahul Gandhi’s Kailash-Mansarovar yatra. The defence minister didn’t want to be any part of it. She tweeted calling out the fake tweet to put matters to rest.