No, Pakistan PM Shehbaz Sharif did not thank Karnataka for electing Congress

Following the victory of the Congress in the Karnataka assembly elections, the screenshot of a tweet has been viral on social media platforms. It apparently shows the Prime Minister of Pakistan expressing his gratitude to the people of Karnataka for electing the Congress on May 13, the day of the poll results. Several Right Wing users shared the screenshot and mocked the party. The ‘tweet’, which is in Urdu, can be translated to English as ”I would like to heartily thank the people of Karnataka for electing Congress. I hope that Congress along with our SDPI will work for the strengthening of Islam in India and the sovereignty of Karnataka!”

Columnist Rakesh Krishnan Simha shared this image with a caption saying, ”Islam = Pakistan = Congress Party = Gandhi Dynasty”. The tweet was later deleted, but the screenshot of the same can be seen below:

Senior BJP leader and former Rajya Sabha member Subramanian Swamy shared this with a caption ”Is this real? I got it from a Whatsapp account”.

Several other social media accounts on Twitter and Facebook shared the screenshot:

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Alt News also received a request on its WhatsApp helpline number (7600011160) to verify the authenticity of the tweet.

 

Fact Check

Alt News performed a Twitter advanced search using relevant keywords and time frames to check the tweets by the Pakistan Prime Minister on May 13. We found three tweets by Shehbaz Sharif on May 13, 2023. None of them was about the Karnataka elections.

We also looked for replies to his tweets. There was no mention of Congress’s victory or the elections in India.

Looking at social media monitoring websites such as Social Blade and Truth Nest, we could confirm that Sharif shared only three tweets on May 13, 2023. This was corroborated by our findings on his Twitter timeline as mentioned above.

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Further in the investigation, we noted that that the tweet screenshot was shared by a Twitter handle named BHKtweets at 4:01 PM on May 13. The user’s bio says ”Threads, Memes, Cartoons, Satire”. The viral screenshot was taken later in the day at 10.18 pm.

In fact, the user shared multiple such fake tweets by the Pakistan Prime Minister before and after the Karnataka elections. The screenshots of the same can be seen here:

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We also looked for reports in Indian and Pakistani media outlets on Sharif commenting on the Karnataka elections, but could not find anything.

Hence, the tweet that is being shared on social media about Pakistan PM Shehbaz Sharif congratulating the Congress over victory in the Karnataka assembly polls is actually a fake tweet shared by a satire page. Alt News investigation confirms that the Pakistan prime Minister did not tweet anything on the election results.