By Hazel Gandhi
A fake quote attributed to Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy is viral online with the false claim that he promised to auction the land on which Hindu temples stood as long as it ensured the welfare of Muslims in the state.
BOOM found the claims to be false; Reddy has been misquoted, and in reality, he made no such statement.
The claim is being shared with a screenshot, purportedly from a news bulletin by Telugu-language news outlet NTV Telugu. Some of the text in the bulletin's graphic, translated roughly from Telugu, reads, "We will help Muslims by auctioning the land", "The only party that supports Muslims in all ways is Congress".
These quotes have been attributed to Reddy and are being shared with the caption, "'Congress is the only party that works for Muslims, We will sell even temple lands for the welfare of Muslims'. ~Telangana Congress party president Revanth Reddy. This is the real face of Congress Party. No amount of temple run during elections will hide their anti-hindu face."
Click here to view the post and here for an archive.
Another similar claim from November this year is being shared with the screenshot of a news report by an outlet called Way2News.
Click here to view the post and here for an archive.
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FACT CHECK
BOOM found that the claims are false and Revanth Reddy has not made any statements about auctioning Hindu temple lands to help Muslims.
We ran a keyword search to look for any news reports about Reddy making a statement similar to the viral claim, but did not find any results.
Further, we found a post on X shared by NTV News' digital manager, Chilukuri Srinivas Rao, who had clarified that the bulletin was fake and not related to NTV Telugu. His post was shared on November 14 and translated roughly from Telugu, it read, "This news has nothing to do with NTV, it is fake news, legal action will be taken against those who create such fake news in the name of NTV. @BJP4Telangana @BRSparty @INCTelangana @revanth_anumula."
Click here for an archive.
We also found a clarification shared by Way2News, another news outlet whose screenshot of the same claim had gone viral in November. The outlet denied publishing the news and wrote, "This is not a #Way2News story. Some miscreants are spreading misinformation using our logo and the 'attached post' has gone viral. We confirm that this has not been published by us."
According to this report published by The Hindu on November 15, Congress party members had filed a petition in the Cyber Crime police against the circulation of this fake claim. The party members accused the Bharatiya Janata Party for spreading these claims and for deliberately maligning Reddy's image.
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