A viral message claiming Ratan Tata said that the Tata group of companies will stop recruiting from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) has been rubbished by Tata Trusts in a statement to BOOM. Ratan Tata serves as the chairman of Tata Trusts, and is chairman emeritus of Tata Sons.
The claim is the latest in a list of fake quotes attributed to Tata that often goes viral, where an arbitrary political comment is made to have been given by him, by users of social media.
The image has the caption: "Big announcement by Rata Tata Sahab: "From now on Tata Group of companies not to recruit any of the JNU #Students. Those who can't be faithful to the country, how can we expect them to be faithful to the company."
The image, which reached BOOM's WhatsApp helpline (7700906111) multiple times can be seen below.
Using the relevant keywords, BOOM also found images having different variants of the same claim on Facebook and Twitter:
JNU has been in the news recently after a mob, masked and armed with sticks and stones, stormed the campus and went on a rampage in the evening of January 5, 2020 injuring students and faculty and damaging property. The university has also been a centre for student protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act. Before the CAA became a full-blown issue, students from the university took to the streets in late 2019 to protest against what they claim was an unfair fee hike.
Listen to our podcast: Tukde-Tukde: A JNU Story
A senior spokesperson of Tata Trusts told BOOM in an emailed statement,
Mr. Tata does not participate in such discourses
Further, he requested that no credence be lent to such kind of content.
Claim around Rata Tata and JNU: A first?
However, this is not the first time that the name of Ratan Tata has cropped up in relation to JNU.
In February 2016, claims surrounding Rata Tata and the Tata Group's recruitment from JNU first came to light. Then, anti-government protests first erupted in the university leading to the arrest of many members of the university's student council, such as Kanhaiya Kumar and Umar Khalid, with many of these students being charged with sedition.They had gathered to commemorate the hanging of Afzal Guru, who was convicted for his role in the 2001 bomb blast outside Parliament.
Also Read: Congress Pledges To Scrap Sedition: All You Need To Know About The 160-Year Law
The tweets carrying these claims broadly carry the hashtags '#CleanUpJNU' and '#ShutDownJNU' from 2016.
Even back then, Tata Group too to social media to clarify that Ratan Tata had made no such statements.
This story is the latest among many other incidents where Ratan Tata has been a target of manufactured quotes. In October 2019, BOOM debunked fake quotes of him apparently taking potshots at Pakistan and the Congress. In March 2019, ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, BOOM debunked a story where a fake Twitter handle made people believe that he took a swipe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi.