On December 5, NDTV reported that the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TSR) won 55 of 150 wards in the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) election. The Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) secured 48 and the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) retained its 44 seats.
In the backdrop of GHMC polls, an image of AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi is viral with the following quote attributed to him, “I will convert to Hinduism and name myself Bhagya raj Tripathi if BJP wins GHMC elections.”
It has been shared on Twitter by several users.
The quote was first tweeted by parody account @UnPaidTimes and retweeted over 700 times. (archived link)
Alt News has received several requests to authenticate this claim on our WhatsApp helpline (+917600011160) and on our official Android application.
Fact-check
Alt News looked up the quote on Google and found that none of the mainstream media outlets has reported that Owaisi made the statement in question. Had Owaisi said that he will convert to Hinduism if the BJP wins GHMC elections, it would have certainly been covered by the media.
We noticed that the tweet by @UnPaidTimes from December 4 at 11:22 am gained most retweets. In fact, using EPOC time we found that it was first to make this claim. As per Unpaid Times’ bio and website, it is a satirical website.
Thus, a tweet by satirical news website was shared on social media and believed to be true by many. Earlier, an image of rape accused Bishop Franco Mulakkal was also shared with a satirical quote attributed by Unpaid Times. This was shared by Madhu Kishwar.
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