Social Viral

Is Rahul Gandhi eating with mask on his face? No, the viral claim is misleading

Written by Md Mahfooz Alam

A photo of the former Congress President, Rahul Gandhi is viral on social media with the claim that he wore a mask while eating. In the viral photo, Gandhi can be seen wearing a mask in a gathering and food served in front of them.

Facto News investigated the photo and found the claim is misleading.

Arun Yadav, IT and Social Media in-charge of BJP Haryana shared the image on Twitter with the caption that reads: मास्क लगा कर खाना खाने वाला पहला आदमी”

(Translation: The first person to eat with a mask on)

(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)

A Facebook page shared a collage of two photos of Rahul Gandhi with the claim that he always eats wearing the mask on his face.

The text on the collage reads: “दुनिया का आठवाँ अजूबा! राहुल जी भोजन हमेशा मास्क पहन कर ही करते है?”

(Translation: Eighth wonder of the world! Does Rahul Ji always eat by wearing a mask? )

(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)

Sambit Patra, also quote tweeted an ANI video post with the caption: “मास्क पहन कर लंगर? ये तो आठवाँ ही हो सकता है !”

(Translation:  Eating langar with the mask? This could only be the eighth wonder.)

(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)

Facto News investigated the second viral photo also and found the claim misleading.

The photos were shared by several other users on Facebook and Twitter. An archive of the same can be accessed here and here.

FactO Check: 

Photo: 1

We conducted a reverse image search of the first photo and came across a Twitter post of 24 January 2021 of the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee. The post has three photos of Rahul Gandhi with several women, in the first photo, he is talking to a woman sitting beside her (the viral photo) and in the other two photos, he isn’t wearing the mask while indulging in food.

Using the keywords “Rahul Gandhi visit to Tamil Nadu”, we came across a news report which confirms Rahul Gandhi had visited Tamil Nadu in January last year to kickstart the Tamil Nadu assembly election campaign.

We also found a video of Rahul Gandhi enjoying food with women on YouTube uploaded by local Tamil media. He can be seen removing his mask at 0:22 seconds in the video.

Photo: 2

The second photo is from the recent visit of Rahul Gandhi to Punjab ahead of the forthcoming assembly election in the state. The Congress leader also visited Golden Temple and in the video attached below, he can be seen eating langer without a mask alongside Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi and Punjab Congress Chief Navjot Singh Sidhu.

Conclusion:

Therefore, it is evident that the viral claim about the two photos is misleading.

Donate to FactO!
If you love what we do @ FactO, you can pour some love and made us feel stronger. We are independently committed to your excellence with full accountability and transparency. You can click on the button below and make a payment of your own choice.

Pay Now

By Clicking on PAY, you agree to our Privacy Policy.

About the author

Md Mahfooz Alam

Mahfooz is a multimedia journalist and regularly writes fact-check stories for Facto News. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism and Mass Communication. He has worked as an intern fact-checker for The Quint. He specializes in research and fact-checking and aspires to do investigative reporting.

Leave a Comment
https://factonews.co/is-rahul-gandhi-eating-with-mask-on-his-face-no-the-viral-claim-is-misleading/
factonews.co
crawl=CC-MAIN-2022-49
72226
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:TCZAYYOC47YFHDE4B7HMOEIDYB2AG7OY
<urn:uuid:6cbdddee-b70f-4d0c-a473-7069b79da644>
2022-12-09T19:21:42Z
144.208.76.23
text/html
sha1:VP5HL3BDSRTO5IKR4QN44ISJLMEE5XAE
<urn:uuid:bf13c154-3fd5-4298-96c7-1af1d8226b1e>
https://factonews.co/is-rahul-gandhi-eating-with-mask-on-his-face-no-the-viral-claim-is-misleading/
response
<urn:uuid:76d239ce-84f2-49d7-be0c-1ca79d3a3726>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2022-49
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for November/December 2022
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-16
software: Apache Nutch 1.19 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.4-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: https://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/