BUSTED: 'True' story by Manish Malhotra about Modi working 18-20 hours a day - Alt News
Pratik Sinha
9th March 2017 / 12:24 am / Last updated: 23rd November 2018
There are several urban legends regarding Prime Minister Narendra Modi which circulate on social media. We’ve heard how “Narendra Modi had been declared the best prime minister in the world by UNESCO” or Julian Assange of Wikileaks fame stating that “Modi is incorruptible”. Both these claims turned out to be false. Similarly, an elaborate hoax started by certain supporters of PM Modi was about how a bureaucrat who had retired in February 2014 decided to rejoin Modi’s PMO and the story he narrates about Modi’s work ethic. Here’s the story.
This tale about Mr Modi was widely circulated on social media with thousands and thousands of shares. It had become so viral that it even appeared on a Times of India blog. This is one of those typical posts which glorifies Mr Modi as to how hard working he is. Apparently, someone called Manish Malhotra, who is an ‘Indian MBA’ from UK and has a close relative in the PMO, is the source of the article. The close relative is referred to as Mr A.
Alt News did some basic fact-checking to ascertain the veracity of this story. Here is what we found.
1) The post claims that Mr A. has been an officer in the Govt for last 44 years and retired in Feb 2014. The typical retirement age of IAS/IPS/IFS officers is 60. So if Mr A was 60 in 2014, he must be 62 now. 44 years of service means he was appointed at the age of 18! We googled for the youngest IAS/IPS officer and couldn’t find anyone less than 22 years of age. Some of the youngest officers have been enlisted in this Quora post.
Even if we assume that Mr A got an extension for 3/4 years, he couldn’t have had 44 years of service. Moreover none of the youngest IAS/IPS officers that we found in our research are in the PMO. In fact, the lower age limit to appear for the UPSC exam through which IAS, IPS, IFS officers are chosen is 21. Wonder, in which country did Mr A appear for an IAS exam at the age of 18!
2) We checked the list of officers listed on PMO site and googled each one of them for their current employment status. Only 3 officers in the PMO right now are among retired IAS/IPS/IFS officers – Nripendra Mishra, Ajit Doval and PK Mishra. None of these officers retired in Feb 2014 or anywhere close to it. Nripendra Mishra’s age is 72 and Ajit Doval’s age is 73, so they retired almost a decade ago and much before Feb 2014 when Mr A supposedly retired. PK Mishra’s age is 68, so he retired at least 5-7 years ago, again much before Feb 2014. So, who is this Mr A who supposedly retired in Feb 2014? He’s nowhere to be found on the list of officers on PMO’s site. The complete list of officers can be found here.
The story keeps getting posted and shared on various social media platforms at regular intervals.
Thus it can be safely concluded that this entire post is someone’s figment of imagination, which has taken flight on social media.
Co-Founder Alt News, I can be reached via E-mail at [email protected] and on Facebook at https://fb.com/freethinker.
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