By Anmol Alphonso
A tweet by a parody Twitter account of the Press Trust of India (PTI) has gone viral claiming social activist Anna Hazare has threatened to go on a hunger strike if Bharatiya Janata Party leader Devendra Fadnavis is not made the Chief Minister of Maharashtra.
The ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government is facing a political crisis after Shiv Sena rebel leader Eknath Shinde along with a group of rebel Shiv Sena MLAs flew to Guwahati, Assam demanding that the Shiv Sena should break their alliance with the Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and align again with the BJP.
The viral tweet quotes the social activist saying, "If Devendra Fadnavis not made CM this time then I will start hunger strike at Saki Naka railway station" Anna Hazare."
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Several Twitter users however fell for the parody account's tweet.
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A screenshot of the parody PTI account tweet has also gone viral on Facebook with the false claim.
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FACT-CHECK
BOOM found that the viral tweet is from a parody PTI Twitter handle and not the real handle of the wire agency.
We also did not find any statement by Hazare on the current political crisis in Maharashtra.
The profile of the Twitter handle impersonating PTI clearly states in its bio that it is a parody account. Secondly, the handle is not verified and the name of the handle is- '@ZackRhea'.
PTI's official Twitter handle name is '@PTI_News' and is officially verified by Twitter.
The catch that it is a satirical tweet is the reference to hold a protest outside 'Saki Naka railway station', Saki Naka located in Andheri East, Mumbai does not have a railway station and only has a Metro station.
BOOM has previously fact-checked tweets from parody handles that have gone viral with false claims.
