A viral graphic designed like a newsbreak by News18 Lokmat claiming Maharashtra Congress chief Nana Patole is resigning from the party, is morphed and fake.
Assembly elections in Maharashtra are scheduled for November 20, 2024, with results set to be announced on November 23.
The electoral battle in Maharashtra, is set to be aggresive given the existing complex nature of the alliance government at the helm. Currently the state is led by the Mahayuti alliance comprised of the chief minister Eknath Shinde led Shiv Sena, Bharatiya Janata Party and the Ajit Pawar faction of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). In opposition is the Maha Vikas Aghadi an alliance between Uddhav Thackery led Shiv Sena (Shiv Sena UBT), Congress and the Sharad Pawar faction of the NCP.
Apart from their names, the parties in both the alliances have little in common with the difference of opinion visible across seat sharing talks and campaign speeches.
The viral graphic has been designed to look like a breaking news alert about Nana Patole, president of the Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC) by News18 Lokmat, the Marathi language news channel with text in Marathi on a red background.
The text on top has the name of the channel's special election related show, Maharashtracha Mahasangram (original text : महाराष्ट्राचा महासंग्राम), with thumbail sized photos of the leaders from the two alliances flanking the sides. The logo of the news channel is visible on the top right corner and a ticker headline visible at the bottom.
The text in Marathi translates in English to, "Upset Nana Patole preparing to leave Congress"
FACT CHECK
We first ran a specific keyword search using the name of the show - Maharashtracha Mahasangram to find text seen on the viral graphic but while we found several episodes of the show mentioned, none of them carried any news about Patole exiting Congress as being claimed in the viral graphic.
We compared the viral graphic with some of the other Maharashtra Mahasangram episodes and found that none of them carry tickers on the screen for the duration of the special show.
The original show by the channel can be seen below:
We also did not find any other news channel or verified report supporting the claim that Patole was resigning from the Congress party.
Additionally, the channel News18 Lokmat put out a clarification on X, calling out the viral graphic as fake and denied reporting any such information
BOOM has debunked several fake news graphic being shared in the run up to the polls. Read all Maharashtra assembly election related fact-checks here.