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  • 2022-02-16 (xsd:date)
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  • Indian politicians misleadingly share old news report on opposition leader 'supporting BJP' (en)
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  • As hundreds of millions of Indians voted in state elections, politicians purported to show a newspaper report that opposition leader Mayawati announced she would back the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the polls. The posts are misleading; the newspaper clipping is not from 2022 but October 2020, when Mayawati rallied behind the BJP ahead of elections after a row with members of her party. A spokesman said the party had not allied with the BJP in the 2022 vote. The image was shared here on Facebook on January 31, 2022 The newspaper clipping shows a photo of Mayawati , leader of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), whose championing of lower castes helped her become chief minister of India's most populous state Uttar Pradesh four times. The headline reads: Will collaborate with BJP to defeat SP. A screenshot of the misleading post taken on February 10, 2022 After years of ups and downs in a coalition with the SP , Mayawati's BSP and the Samajwadi Party (SP) are separately contesting the BJP's Yogi Adityanath for the chief minister job in Uttar Pradesh -- home to 200 million people -- in elections that kicked off on February 10, 2022. The newspaper clipping was shared in January 2022 here and here on Facebook; and here in December 2021 by a local party SuhelDev Bhartiya Samaj Party’s general secretary Arun Rajbhar on Twitter. Some social media users appeared to believe the article was recent. Mayawati has sold the dignity of the Dalit and marginalised people to BJP for political power, one Twitter user commented, referring to the lowest group under India's caste system. She will lose even that small number of seats this time that she won when collaborated with SP last time, another wrote. However, the posts are misleading. Multiple social media users such as here and here shared a larger version of the newspaper clipping, which features the title of Hindi-language daily Dainik Jagran, that gave the publication date as October 30, 2020. Screenshot of the newspaper clipping showing the publication date, taken on February 9, 2022 Dainik Jagran published the digital version of the report here on its website on October 29, 2020. While the headline and photo in the online version of the article are slightly different from the print version, the story is the same. The article reports that Mayawati sacked seven legislators whom she accused of colluding with the SP ahead of elections in Uttar Pradesh's upper house of parliament. She pledged to support rival BJP in a bid to stop the SP from winning. Various Indian media covered the political fallout, including Mayawati's declaration of support for the BJP, including here , here and here . The BSP's national spokesman Faizan Khan said the party had not allied with the BJP or any other party in the Uttar Pradesh 2022 election. We will make our government on our own. We will make our government our own. We don't need the support of any other party who has this discrimination against minorities, he told AFP. Further, there are no media reports about Mayawati joining hands with the BJP for the 2022 Assembly elections. (en)
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